Lou Throws Up in 4th Grade

“Mom, do you feel like you have to throw up?”

I glanced in the rearview mirror at Lou seated in the backseat. It was the Tuesday before Christmas, and we had just landed a pretty prime parking spot at the top of the hill on 52nd street, which meant that at 3:30 dismissal, we could peel out and arrive home pretty quickly, thus commencing Christmas Break 2023. 

But first, we had to endure Sam’s class Christmas party, which I had volunteered to coordinate. A rookie mistake, and I’m by no means a rookie.

“Uh, no. Lou, do you feel like you have to throw up?”

“Nope,” he replied back to me, confident as always, but I felt like he was lying. 

It was the third such comment he’d made in the last three hours, which made me very, very nervous. Especially since I’d just texted another mom friend, whose 10 year-old was home sick at that very moment, “At this point, I feel like we’re immune to just about everything. There can’t possibly be a virus out there that we haven’t had!”

What a dumb, stupid text that was. Just begging for ebola. Right before Christmas, too.

We have rarely encountered a virus that hits each of us the same way, with identical symptoms. But it usually gets five out of six us, maybe four if we’re lucky, but the uncertainty, not knowing who will go down next is almost unbearable. 

Not a great way to start out the holiday. Last Christmas, our Florida trip was canceled at the last minute thanks to the sudden-not-so-sudden implosion of Southwest Airlines. This year, traveling on a plane with a stomach bug would be miserable. Possible, yes. But miserable.

And there’s the issue of my dad, fresh off his fourth round of chemo. His health is otherwise pretty great, but chemo PLUS a virus might knock him out harder than it would the rest of us.

If we erred on the side of caution and canceled our trip altogether for the second year in a row, we’d be homebound for two solid weeks. In the winter. With only an occasional basketball practice here and there to distract us from perpetual togetherness.

So, yes, the prospect of a looming stomach bug was almost as nauseating as the bug itself. 

I paused a moment before getting out of the car, contemplating whether I should run him home to sit with Tighe for the afternoon. An hour or so of Paw Patrol wouldn’t hurt him.

“Lou. Seriously, do you feel okay?”

“Yeah, let’s go!”

Eh, what the heck.

And then it was like the universe gave me one last chance.

Because of course, as soon as we entered the school grounds, Lou’s behavior just tanked. He really might be the most popular kid at that school and he doesn’t even go there yet.

Every time we stroll down that sidewalk in front of the school, kids scream his name from behind the metal bars that enclose the playground. Once we enter the building, they trickle out of classrooms, sneaking away from their lessons to give him a hug or a high five, or in far too many cases, to get flipped off by him.

Yeah, you read that right.

It’s like Beatlemania.

I don’t fully understand the appeal, but I understand that each callout of “Lou!” makes his ego climb just a tad higher, until suddenly he’s invincible, strutting through the hallway like he owns the place. And then it’s on me to bring him down to earth, to instill a little discipline and keep the place in order. Otherwise he starts hitting and wrestling and using profanity and the whole school starts to unravel. 

This is why I’ve started to limit my volunteer days to the days when he’s safely tucked away in preschool.

And this day was no exception to the mania. In fact, it was probably worse than usual because it was the last day before break. Meaning kids were already high on sugar, blind with euphoric anticipation of Santa, and just plain amped to have two weeks off of school. No actual teaching can possibly be accomplished on those days. 

Before I knew it, the other moms and I were busy unpacking all the goodies and games we had brought for the kids. Lou was peacocking around the classroom, replying to the 9 and 10 year-olds with nonsensical poop and fart jokes and lots of giggling.

And then all of the sudden, they dropped to whispers. 

“Did he?”

“No, he didn’t!”

“Yes, he did!”

My back was turned, but I was able to deduce that he’d flipped off one of the boys. Later, at dinner, when Sam recalled his version of events, he told us which boy it was, and Nate whispered, “Good for you, Lou!”

Still, even if it was the class bully—I used that term very loosely as I don’t believe in such labels—I can’t let Lou get away with that. Not in front of all those angelic Catholic school girls and boys. I also use that term loosely.

“LOU!” I breathed at him fiercely. When I was pregnant with Nate, a friend gave me a little plaque that reads: “Don’t yell at your kids. Lean in and whisper, it’s much scarier.” That was the tone I was using with Lou at that moment.

“If you do not get it together,” I hissed, “I will call Tighe this very moment and he will come pick you up and you will sit alone in your bedroom. No party. No hot chocolate. No other miscellaneous treats.”

“Okay, okay, OKAY!” And he knew I was serious. 

Sam’s teacher runs a tight ship, she’s pretty incredible actually, and I didn’t want to be the reason she quits her job in the middle of the school year. 

And that was it. That was my last chance from the universe to get rid of Lou and keep him from infecting the rest of the school with the stomach bug that he’s likely contracted from some of those very same students to begin with.

We resumed Festive Mode. The hot chocolate and popcorn was a hit. The games were intensely competitive. And everyone was in a pretty good mood. 

At some point, though, and I’m unclear on when, Lou had snuck away to visit one of the third grade classrooms and they had issued him a chocolate covered gingerbread cookie as a parting gift. Probably like, “take this cookie and go away.”

He returned to Sam’s classroom, showed everyone his sugary bounty and plopped down to recline on one of the floor cushions munching away on the cookie, gingerbread crumbs spraying from his mouth like a woodchipper. 

I was barely paying attention to him as I darted back and forth, handing out prizes and cleaning up spills. All was merry.

Suddenly I spied his little red Christmas sweatered body dashing across the room. In fact, he was trailing my path as though he was trying to reach me. He was unmistakably clutching his mouth with his palm, as if he was trying to keep the contents inside. Without registering a complete thought, I pivoted back to try to reach him in time.

But it was too late. I watched as vomit spewed from his mouth, all across the white tile floors of the 4th grade classroom. 

As soon as he had finished, he began screaming and crying, but it was drowned out by the chorus of 4th graders: 

“Ewww!” 

“Lou threw up!” 

“Gross!” 

“Look, I can see the cookie!”

“I lost my appetite!”  

“Can I have more hot chocolate?”

We were very fortunate that his projectile vomit landed on the floor and only on the floor. His teacher, a veteran professional educator, is well-stocked with clorox wipes, paper towels, and tissues. I used all three to mop up the mess while Lou clutched my sleeve and sobbed. 

Thank God it was the end of the school day, the end of the party. We were back home within the half hour, quarantined safely and securely in our living room.

But. 

Was it food poisoning?

Did he choke on the gingerbread cookie that he was eating while laying on his back?

Or was it the heinous stomach bug that had been circulating for months and we’d managed to avoid?

Well, I guess only time will tell for sure. But I can tell you that he ate a hearty dinner a few hours later, wrestled with Sam most of the afternoon, and asked for hot chocolate with marshmallows just before bedtime.

Thoughts and prayers, please.

Is Lou on Santa's Naughty List?

In the interest of time, both mine and yours, let’s just cut to the chase here. 

On Saturday morning, Lou ate 23 of the 24 pieces of chocolate in his Trader Joe’s advent calendar. Which is to say that he ate all of it, since he’d had his first piece the day before, on the first day of December.

Twenty-three pieces of chocolate.

Which was definitely not his intent when he woke up that morning. He was actually pretty proud of his advent calendar and he fully understood the systematic procedure of only ingesting one piece per day, in grateful, holy anticipation of the birth of the Messiah. Makes perfect sense to me, a 40 year-old, so of course it makes sense to 4 year-old Lou.

When I came down that morning, Lou, full of pride, reported to me, “Mom! I already ate my piece of chocolate for today!”

“Wait,” Sam had said, interjecting himself into Lou’s very spiritual and sugar-fied awaiting of Christ. “Where is Lou’s advent calendar?”

The other kids, per tradition, always prop their calendars on the buffet in the dining room. Lou does what he wants, so he stored his in his room, on his bookshelf. I was thrilled about it, fearing mice and ants, but whatever, who has the energy to argue with him?

“It’s in his room,” I replied. I hadn’t had my coffee yet, so my brain couldn’t predict what was about to happen.

“In his room?” Nate questioned. As the oldest, he knows the “no food upstairs” policy pretty well.

“I want to see it!” Sam called out, and immediately, all four kids went scrambling up the steps to Lou’s room to see the $1.99 advent calendar that, at that moment, housed 22 pieces of chocolate.

This sent Lou into a panic. As the youngest child, he knows well enough to protect his valuables. If the roles were reversed, he would absolutely be raiding the older kids’ advent calendars. Any time something goes missing in our house, whether it’s Sam’s prized Lego build, the good scissors, or a part to the brand-new vacuum cleaner, Lou is almost always the culprit.

He tried to surge ahead of them, beating them to his treasure. 

“I just want to see it!” I heard Sam yell.

“NO!” There was shrieking and scuffling and banging and profanity, and a few minutes later, they all returned downstairs.

“Lou just ate all his chocolate,” Sam shrugged, smirking a little at the calamity he had caused.

“All 23 pieces?!!” I was incredulous. “It’s all gone?”

“Yep!”

And the chocolate smeared around Lou’s lips pretty much confirmed it. 

Nate brought down the shredded cardboard pieces to the advent calendar. “Mom! He really ate all of it!”

He was practically doubled over laughing. 

I was not.

I should mention here that Tighe is away for three days for his annual silent retreat. Which is just what it sounds like. Three days in near luxurious accommodations—he says it’s nicer than a hotel—where he doesn’t have to talk to anyone, is never bothered by anyone. He can think and listen and read and go for walks and stare at a wall all day long.

We were about to leave for Tess’s basketball game, then right to Sam’s game, and then we were going to shop for the adopt-a-family Christmas gifts we had signed up for. So we had a few hours out of the house ahead of us, and I knew that that much chocolate inside a 4 year-old body would need to come out somehow. And in the process, there would surely be cramping and stomach aches and a sugar high and a sugar crash. Which probably meant whining, discomfort, hyperactivity, misbehavior, and more whining before it all exited his system, either through one end of his body or the other, if you know what I mean.

And all of that happened, just as I predicted. He wrestled with Nate on the floor at Tess’s game, cried about things that wouldn’t normally bother him at Sam’s game, spent about 10 minutes pooping in a public restroom, and when we got home a few hours later, he crashed on a beanbag chair in the basement watching a show with Sam. 

Remember that Tighe was away, so as the single mom in the situation, it was grueling. But I knew we just needed to get through it; it would pass. And throughout, I offered an excessive number of mini lectures about why too much candy first thing in the morning—or any time really—is bad.

But that’s not even the whole story. Nor the best part. By which I obviously mean, the WORST part.

At 4pm, we went to mass. Like good pseudo-Catholics.

I had been coordinating the first grade stewardship project, which entailed wrangling a group of first graders after weekend masses to have them hand out flyers about a winter coat drive. 

So, in other words, we HAD to go to mass. 

And apparently the chocolate was still working its way through Lou. It was, hands down, the worst mass behavior I’d ever seen from him. Which is saying a lot. 

I’ll skip all the gory details, but at one point he was repeatedly zipping and unzipping my sweatshirt so that I was practically flashing the other parishioners. Nate was altar serving, so he was sitting on the far side of the altar, next to the priest. Sam and Tess, meanwhile, were trying to “help” corral Lou, but they were only making it worse. Even the rationalizations and threats that usually reign him in were not working. I tried “Santa’s watching” as a last resort, and it didn’t faze him.

Finally, just before communion, I couldn’t take it anymore, so I grabbed our jackets and shoved Tess, Lou, and Sam, out of the sanctuary. It was almost time to position ourselves to pass out the flyers anyway, and I can’t imagine that anyone seated near us was sad to see us go.

So, we went out into the lobby, where there's always a small group of parents and babies who’ve removed themselves from the quiet sanctuary. I sent Lou to the corner by the fireplace where there’s a basket of children’s books while I organized the small group of kids who were helping to pass out flyers. As I dispatched them to their posts by the front doors, I lost track of Lou.

I knew he’d sulk for a while. 

Then I saw him hiding under the giant table in the very center of the narthex. There was a small toddler, probably about a year old, crawling under the table with him, supervised by his dad. Sure that the first graders had their mission under control, I kept my eye on him for a split second longer than I normally would have.

Which is when I saw him flip off the baby. 

As in, he gave the middle finger.

Flipped the bird.

The MIDDLE FINGER. 

To a BABY.

I didn’t even know how to begin to discipline that move. I wasn’t sure if the baby’s dad saw the obscene gesture or not, but I definitely did.

I hooked my hand around his elbow and dragged his body along the tile floor out from under the table.

“Did you just flip off a baby?” I said, propping him up on the fireplace hearth.

“He was tryin’ to follow me!” he said, as if the injustice of it all was so obvious and egregious.

“Sit there and don’t move.”

And he didn’t. 

I spent the remainder of the night trying to make him feel shame and remorse, then wondering aloud if he was on Santa’s naughty or nice list. It was very theatrical.

And then, around 1am, he awoke crying that his ear hurt. When he awoke a second time, less than an hour later, I was convinced that the pain must be legitimate, so I gave him some ibuprofen and sent him back to bed. 

The next morning, a trip to urgent care confirmed: ear infection. 

In the car on the way home, I asked him, “Lou, when did your ear start hurting? Was it in the middle of the night? Or was it at mass?”

Perhaps he could hear the hopefulness in my voice or perhaps he just saw where I was leading him with my questions, but he went with it. 

“Ohhhhh, now I remember!” he concluded with that classic Lou confidence. “It was hurtin’ during mass and so I was mad and that’s why I flipped off the baby!”

“Yes, I think so, too.”

At least I hoped so. Please dear God in Heaven, let there be a “valid” reason that Lou flipped off a baby at church other than that I’m a bad parent and Lou’s a terrible sociopath. 

Happy Advent indeed.

Sam + Bull = True Love

We had just finished dinner with Tighe’s grandmother at Jack Stack Barbecue on the Plaza, and Lou was in rare form. Actually, not rare form. Typical Lou, just on turbo charge. 

He told me earlier that he had trouble waking up from his nap at school, so his teacher gave him a cookie, which made him feel better.

What was in that cookie?

And can I have some? 

He was in a good mood. Just enthusiastic. Spastic. Chatty. Loud. Like I said, typical Lou.

He kept us all entertained—Tighe’s grandmother snickering—but I knew it was only a matter of time before he tripped a waiter with a tray of food.

So as we were still at the table paying the bill, I sent Lou and Sam to wait outside. 

But since the restaurant is on the corner of a busy intersection, I scampered after them pretty quickly. I pictured them wrestling on the sidewalk, then barrel-rolling into oncoming traffic. Mom anxiety, amiright?

As I passed by the hostess station and through the first set of doors, an older couple headed inside for dinner stopped me. 

“Were those your children?”

“Uh, yes?” I replied cautiously.

My face must have said, “Uh-oh, what did they do now?” because the woman was quick to reassure me. 

“No, it’s good!” she said, smiling and grasping my forearm to reassure me.

“They held the door for us!” the husband said, and he was almost as incredulous as I was. 

“Like little gentlemen!” the wife nodded.

Who did? I wondered to myself. Sam? Or Lou? It was hard to imagine either one doing that.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen Sam slide in or out of a busy store or restaurant, totally oblivious to the people around him getting spanked by the door he let it slam shut. Or the grocery cart as he’s spinning it in circles with reckless abandon. Or, so caught up in his own little world, he doesn’t even notice when his antics with Lou shot block a helpless bystander. 

Speaking from my own personal experience, it helps to be really agile, have cat-like reflexes, and be able to pivot, dodge, and weave in a fraction of a second when you’re hanging with those two. They’re a recipe for disaster, a public nuisance. And I mean that in the most loving, most maternal way.

“Oh, good!” I said back to the elderly couple in my most congenial voice. “You never know what you’re going to get with those two!”

“It was very sweet, very polite!”

“Well, thank you. Have a wonderful evening!” I honestly couldn’t have been more cordial if I was running for the local school board. A compliment about my kids will keep me flying high for days. 

Since we’d just had parent-teacher conferences that morning, I was actually higher than usual. Nate, Sam, and Tess all received really good feedback from their teachers, especially Sam. His teachers usually offer lots of praise, but this time his homeroom teacher seemed to go deeper, like she had some sort of authoritative insight into the inner workings of his brain, soul, and heart, and what she saw was all extremely favorable. Her premonition was a true feat because Sam is reserved, mysterious, and very difficult to read. 

His teacher is an experienced, veteran educator, so we trusted her. Plus, she hadn’t said anything that contradicted any of our own intel on Sam. He has a big heart; he’s very intelligent, focused, quiet but sensitive, and kind of a perfectionist. So positive, heartwarming, uplifting. It was all very reassuring. 

Rejoining Sam in the hallway after the conference, I felt like he could take on the world. He’s capable—no, gifted. Tighe and I need to get out of his way and let him soar. He’s ready. 

I was still wondering whether it was Sam or Lou who initiated the chivalrous door-holding act as I stepped out onto the sidewalk and turned to look for Sam’s signature kelly green Visitation football shirt. I wanted to tell him I was proud of him, to reiterate the kind words from the older couple who were the recipients of his valor and courtesy. Maybe he’s going to turn into a kind, virtuous, contributing member of society after all. 

But all I saw was Lou in his dingy grey hand-me-down track pants and brand spanking new Lebron James basketball shoes that he totally doesn’t need. He was patting the giant bronze statue of a bull famously planted on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant.

“Mom, look!” 

Sam’s voice. 

I glanced down toward the sidewalk. 

Sam was lying on his back in the mulch under the bull, reaching up to grope its testicles.

Both hands were gripping the penis, and he was sliding them up and down the shaft.

"Sam!" I gasped. “Get up! What are you doing?!"

The dichotomy of his Jekyll and Hyde behaviors, only moments apart, was jarring. Funny, obviously. But so paradoxical that it made me pause. With disgust.

In less than a few moments, I went from proud to repulsed. 

Here I was thinking that Tighe and I had succeeded in parenting him, instilling compassion, grit, courtesy, kindness, and fortitude, but in reality we had actually failed to teach him that it’s absolutely inappropriate—no, vile and grotesque—to jerk off a statue of a bull in public.

This, I suppose, is the nature of the middle grade years. So commendable and impressive in one instant, and then in the next, immature, crass, childish, and embarrassing. 

“Okay, time to go, Sam.” I knew we needed to get out of there before he got us fined or arrested for lewd conduct. I don’t know the legal statutes for sodomizing a bull in the midwest, but he’ll never get into prep school with that on his permanent record.  

As we crossed the street into the parking garage, he leapt up to touch the bottom of the sign hanging from the entryway. He missed by about eight inches and as his body returned to the earth, he swatted me with his lanky arms by accident, knocking the three to-go boxes I was carefully balancing, to the sticky, gross parking garage floor. 

I sighed, kneeling down to pick up the boxes by myself as he sprinted ahead to catch up with Nate. 

Not such a kind, courteous gentleman after all.

Parenting Blunder

First of all, let me begin by saying that I do not blame Tighe for this incident. Nor do I accept all the blame myself. It was a consensual decision. Impulsive. We were exhausted. Cold. Mildly hungover. Mildly. 

And I don’t think either one of us had eaten a complete, nutritious meal that day. 

In truth, it had been a long week. 

Sam got sick. Tighe was out of town. Lou was “blue,” which was his teacher’s description. Then Tess got sick. By Friday, we were back to normal, but Tighe and I had tickets to a 10pm stand-up show, and it ended up being a long night. We were in bed by 2am and then up by 7:30am for Tess’s 9am soccer game.

She sat at the breakfast table, tearfully spooning soggy Cheerios into her mouth. She was excited about her game, but she was adamant that she was not going to spend the day going to all the boys’ games afterwards. We had Nate’s football at 11am, Lou’s soccer at 2pm, and Sam’s flag football game at 7pm, way up north.

Honestly, I was feeling overwhelmed by it all, too. I’d have to oversee snacks, cash for concession stands, jerseys that fit, water bottles, shin guards, cleats, mouthguards, all the things. And deal with everyone’s inevitable mood swings. When would we have time for that oh-so-necessary nutritious meal? 

But I stayed calm, trying my darndest not to escalate her emotions by controlling my own. After a marathon of back and forth arguing with Tess—Tighe and I basically played good cop/bad cop with a sprinkle of reverse psychology—we got out the door, braved the breezy misty morning, came home with a win, and scooped up Sam, Lou, and some steaming hot chocolates to make it in time for Nate’s game.

Another win!

This day just kept getting better. 

Until it got worse.

We headed home for some outfit changes—dry clothes, please!—and a quick lunch, and then headed back to the soccer complex for Lou’s game.

It should be noted that Lou is an enthusiastic soccer player. He exists with a certain joie de vivre that I’ve never seen in a 4 year-old. Upon waking up each and every morning, he sits up and asks, groggily, “Do I have my soccer game today?”

And I have to walk that delicate line between telling him, “no” without setting him off to the point that he refuses to get dressed and go to school. There’s a lot of stalling. A lot of vague replies from me. I ask some questions that I actually know the answer to, like, “I don’t know, what day is it again?” Or something evasive like, “I’ll have to check the schedule.”

Let’s not forget I was a political science major and an enneagram 9. Which means I don’t like confrontation. 

But Lou always follows up. Always asks to see the calendar so he can confirm the date, and together we count the days and talk about how hard he’s going to work in the game. It’s beautiful, really. 

So as we drove to soccer that Saturday afternoon, he was in the zone. As he always is. He stares out the window, dialed in to Jay-Z or Outkast or Eminem or whatever his pump-up song of choice is that day.

We tumbled out of the car, Lou holding Tighe’s hand, his soccer ball tucked under his other arm. He was ready.

Until he wasn’t.

I really can’t describe what happened next with complete certainty. We walked through the gates and strolled across turf. We’ve lived in Kansas City for ten years now, so it feels like we know everyone with small children. A group of kids, some on Lou’s team and some not, immediately ran up to greet us. 

And I think that’s when we lost Lou.

Suddenly he needed to be held. 

I tried to put him back down on the ground, but he wouldn’t let go of my neck. So I knelt down with him still clinging to me and closed my eyes. I was so tired, it felt really good to close my eyes. I don’t know whether I was trying to soothe Lou or myself.

“Lou, this is your soccer game. You’ve been waiting all week for this! This is your chance to dominate!”

Sam and Tess had already run off with a group of older kids, and Tighe was standing a few yards away recounting the details Nate’s football game to another dad. Dads are a special breed.

Lou’s favorite teammate and his older sister had come to check on Lou, and they stood inches from my face. They were trying to be helpful, but I think their proximity just overwhelmed him even more.

“What’s wrong with Lou?” they asked, after he was unresponsive to their direct inquiries.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “He loves soccer, he was so excited. Lou! You were so excited!”

I shrugged my shoulders and shook my head in the direction of his coach, who was looking our way, inquisitively. 

And then Tighe, now wrapping up his oration of the football game, walked over.

“Okay, we’re done! Lou, if you’re not going to play, we’re leaving!”

“Yeah,” I agreed with Tighe. “Let’s go.”

And we did.

But why did we do that? That’s not what we’ve done in the past!

All four of our kids, against better judgment, played on these same soccer fields starting at three years old. Was it a good investment? Probably not. It’s not like any of them are better athletes BECAUSE of this tiny-person, small ball field. In fact, all of them had a day or two or many, that they didn’t even want to play. 

When Nate was this age, he wrestled on the sidelines with his buddies while the girls on his team followed directions and paid attention to the game. Sam often sat on a picnic blanket with his best friend Jimmy, who refused to step onto the field until he was about 5. And Tess was engaged depending on which friends were on the field with her. Otherwise, she was on the sidelines, coloring.

But we stayed for all of them, encouraging, but not pressuring, each child to get in the game while we chatted on the sidelines with the other parents. 

Even last spring, when we showed up to an early morning game for Lou when it was bitter cold and overcast, and almost every small child refused to play, we stayed. Lou laid on the damp turf, sobbing. Then whimpering. Then occasionally glancing up to see what his friends were doing, what all the cheering was about. And eventually, Lou cheered up and decided to play. And he had a blast!

Each time, by staying for the entirety of the game, we were teaching lessons about teamwork. Resilience. Tenacity. Grit. 

You’re part of the team, so even if you don’t play, you have to stay and cheer on your friends. You can do tough things! You can persevere in bad weather! And you’ll be rewarded for it! With joy, endorphins, a sense of triumph and confidence! And sometimes donuts.

I’m a big proponent of kids sports. Obviously. For so many reasons! Physical activity is good for mental health; being part of a team helps make friends; lots of kids find an outlet for their anxiety, depression, or anger; kids who may not have found success in school or socially might find success in sports; being outdoors can boost vitamin D intake, and the list goes on.

So why did we leave this particular time? 

Just before we turned left on 63rd street to head for home, we gave Lou one last opportunity. 

“Lou, this is your last chance. What do you think? Do you want to play soccer today?”

“No,” he muttered, staring out the window. “I do not want to play.”

“Alright, that’s it. I think you’re gonna be bummed later.”

Poor little guy. In the back of my head, I know that’s a lot of pressure for a 4 year-old. He’s impulsive; he can’t predict how his current actions will affect his feelings in the future. He lives life in four-minute increments.

But as I sat in the comfy, heated leather seat in Tighe’s Yukon Denali, I was already dreaming about an extra hour on the sofa watching college football before we had to head out to Sam’s game that evening. And I know Tighe was, too. 

If Lou’s soccer game had been the only activity of the day, I think we probably would have attempted to overcome his bad mood. We would have stayed, chatted with our parent friends, and cheered on the little kids, which hopefully, would include Lou.

But instead we went home.

Instead of teaching perseverance and resilience, we taught a lesson about regret and missed opportunities. At least, I think we did. Maybe we just taught a lesson about tired, old parents who stayed up too late the night before and how easily they give up. 

Friday Night Hibachi

Is there anyone on this planet who doesn’t love hibachi? Seriously, can you name someone who doesn’t?

I’ll wait while you brainstorm everyone you know.

Oh, wait. Have you met Lou? Because he doesn’t like it.

And three of our four kids have never been. So a hibachi dinner has been on our bucket list for a while now. 

But we’ve been stalling. Partly because it’s expensive and partly because we have such picky eaters. But suddenly, Lou’s been eating his meals with chopsticks for some reason. Excuse me, “chompsticks.” I think just because he found some in the back of the utensil drawer and in his usual spirit of adventure combined with his “I can do anything” mindset, he fully embraced the new skill.

For meatballs. Spaghetti. Waffles. Everything.

So Tighe and I took stock of our picky eaters. Nate pretty much inhales everything at this point, likely due to his constant activity level and his body’s preparation for an adolescent growth spurt. And Sam’s trailing close behind. Lou’s been a pretty adventurous eater ever since he started eating solid foods, plus he’s always up for an outing.

It’s really just Tess who’s a picky eater holdout. On most nights at dinner, she surveys the spread on the dining room table and gives me a disgusted eye roll. Then she excuses herself to head to the fridge for some cheese and a banana. Something about that combination must be working for her because she’s growing. 

Anyway, as soon as the weather gets cold and college football gets good, Tighe always craves Chinese food or Thai food or Japanese food, so on our first chilly Friday morning, I called and made a reservation for six people that evening. 

The kids were pumped. They love eating at restaurants. But it soon became apparent that we need to start venturing away from our usuals: Culvers, Chick Fil-a, pizza, tacos, and Third Street Social, where all four kids order chicken and waffles, no matter whether it’s brunch, lunch, or dinner. 

As expected, we were about 4 minutes late for our six o’clock reservation. Not bad, actually. 

And in true hibachi fashion, we were seated with another family: mom, dad, and a little girl about Tess’s age.

Perfect, I thought. I assigned seats so that Tess was seated next to the Other Little Girl. Then Lou, Sam, Nate, me, and Tighe. 

Tess made it clear that she wasn’t thrilled with the arrangement, but I couldn’t expose this Other Little Girl to the boys. She’s an only child. She was donning a very expensive looking peacoat with some sort of fur lining and sipping a shirley temple. She was not ready for Lou or Sam. 

If Tess is Wednesday Addams, in her gray hoodie, crimped blond hair and signature plastic cat ear headband, this Other Little Girl is Amanda Buckman. Chipper, cheerful, bubbly, agreeable, eager. While Tess is miserable, depressed, melancholic. 

Actual photo of the other little girl and Tess.

You know, not really, but that’s the aura she gives off. The contrast between the two girls was delightful to watch.

And it’s like Tess read the whole script ahead of time and arrived at the restaurant in character. Because she performed great.

Scowling. Staring straight ahead. Ignoring the friendly advances from the Other Little Girl and her mother. The mother who, after we made introductions, started off by saying, “I could never have this many children,” as her daughter ordered sushi and instructed the chef to prepare her filet “rare.”

Candid Photo of The OTHER LITTLE GIRL AND HER PARENTS.

Don’t get me wrong, they were very nice and cordial, but after a few minutes I got the impression that we were playing the part of the weird homeschool family, who suddenly, perhaps carelessly, found themselves overrun with children. Children they couldn’t afford and didn’t have the time to raise properly. Or teach to speak. Or instruct in proper restaurant etiquette.

We were coming across as unsophisticated. Uncultured. Bush league. Monolingual. And just plain weird. 

Sam was crouched like a gargoyle at the corner of the table, stabbing his fork into the porcelain plate and sipping alternately from one of the two sodas he had ordered. Lou was wide-eyed, anxiously scanning the restaurant, wary of the blasts/torpedoes of hot flames shooting up from the grill tops at nearby tables. Like a skittish puppy who’d never been outside of his own house before. 

“Uh, Nate. Look!” he said, nervously calling on his big brother, the only hibachi veteran among them, for reassurance. But Nate was hungry! He was totally dialed in on the pending steak and rice feast that he was about to inhale. 

Tess was staring straight ahead, actively ignoring the Other Little Girl and her Mom. Which prompted the Other Little Girl to begin speaking to her in French, as though perhaps it was a language barrier that prevented them from being besties. Of course she was fluent in French.

The Mom, feigning embarrassment, decided she needed to intervene. Like a good helicopter parent. 

“My favorite color is green!” she said with too much enthusiasm. “What’s your favorite color?”

After an uncomfortable pause, during which even I started to wonder if Tess was deaf in one ear, Tess turned to face the Mom, and replied with an exaggerated amount of cheeriness, “Pink!”

Then immediately turned back to her stone faced scowl, once again staring straight ahead.

But the Mom was unfazed and continued peppering her with icebreaker questions. I know Tess wants to be a veterinarian some day, but she might want to consider a career in espionage because any state secret would be safe with her.

The Mom seemed to ooze sympathy for Tess. She’d admitted earlier that her daughter is spoiled, that hibachi is a standard Friday night for her, instead of a novel outing like it was for our kids. 

“This poor girl,” I imagined her saying to herself, “all these mongrel brothers and she doesn’t even know how to speak. Or behave in a restaurant. She’s missing out on life!”  

Tighe and I, at the opposite end of the table, couldn't decide whether to be embarrassed or amused. I’m half kidding, we were pretty amused. But I was also desperate for the chef to come and begin preparing our food. That’s why we’re here after all.

But when he arrived, the drama shifted from Tess to Lou.

Because it turns out he doesn’t like fire. 

When the chef first drenched the grill top in oil and then set fire to it, the flames of which shot up towards the ceiling, Lou hit the deck. He dove off his chair under the table. Sam had to coax him back up and assure him it was okay. 

He looked around at his tablemates and, noting that everyone else was laughing and having a good time, he started laughing, too. A nervous laugh. Slow and slightly exaggerated, keeping one cautious eye on the chef at all times. He definitely didn’t relax the rest of the night. 

In fact, he started muttering to himself. 

“Is Lou Greenhalgh gonna have to choke a bitch?”

Okay, in reality, the background noise in the restaurant was too great to hear what he was saying, but we like to imagine it was that. 

He didn’t find the shrimp toss antics amusing. He didn’t find it funny when the chef started messing with Sam, pretending to deliver Sam’s rice to his plate, but only delivering about a grain or two at a time. And, hungry as always, he didn’t appreciate that the food was served still steaming, too hot to actually eat. 

And despite our reassurances, he had to dive for cover a few more times during the night. Once during the flaming onion volcano. And again during a surprise shrimp toss. For extra credit, apparently.

As we drove home that night, Tighe asked them what they thought of the dinner. Nate and Sam loved it. They enjoyed the food and the entertainment and were pretty excited about our four to-go boxes stacked on my lap. 

Tess, believe it or not, also enjoyed herself. She said she’d love to go back. I don’t know whether she enjoyed putting on a performance that messes with people’s sense of reality, manipulating them to question everything they thought they knew about human kind. Or if she enjoyed the four strands of lo mein she consumed,

Only Lou, after everyone else chimed their approval, waited a pause, and said, simply, “No.”

“You didn’t like it, Lou?”

“No, and I never want to go back.”

The End of an Era??

Is this it? Is this the end of me as a mom?

Maybe. 

This week, this first week of October 2023, Lou—the youngest of my four kids—started school full-time.

As in Monday through Friday, 8am to 3:30pm. 

WHAT?!

We didn’t start the school year this way, of course. We started off in mid-August with Lou enrolled in school on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

Five days a week just seemed like so much for a three year-old. Except that now he’s just turned four. And he’s the youngest. 

So it was just me and Tighe at home with him on those Tuesdays and Thursdays, no one else to play with. In the past, it’s always been fairly easy for me to fill those mornings with him. A playground when the weather’s nice. Or the zoo. Or Wonderscope. Or Science City. Thursday morning swim lessons. Or errands. Lou loves a good Whole Foods run. Or aimless wandering through Target. 

But perhaps it was that last bout of bra-shopping with Tighe’s grandmother that did him in. I turned to look at him seated in the bright red Target cart at one point, and he was totally inverted, his legs sprawled over the side, with an expression on his face that said, “kill me now.”

“Why are we still here?” he moaned to me, rolling his eyes and gesturing his arm at his only remaining great-grandparent, who was re-examining the same rack of wireless bras that she’d looked at three times now. 

About seven minutes later, I let him pick out a new Paw Patrol toy. 

Sometimes Mom Guilt is pricier than full-time preschool tuition.

A few days later, his teacher casually mentioned to me that they had an opening on Tuesdays and Thursdays. 

I sat on this bit of information for about a week. I chewed on it while I watched Lou eat lunch in the dining room by himself, then collapse onto the sofa for an hour or so of Paw Patrol. 

I mentioned it to two mom friends who also had their youngest fourth-born kids in full-time preschool. 

“Of course you should take that Tuesday/Thursday spot,” they agreed emphatically as we sat in the stands at a 6th grade football game. “If you don’t take it fast, someone else will.”

But I still felt guilty. Is five days of early morning wake-ups too much? What about in the dead of winter when we’re waking up when it’s cold and still dark outside?

“But it’s preschool,” people argued back. “If he starts to burn out, you can keep him home every once in a while!”

So I asked Lou for his input.

He’d already told me that he loves school, loves his teacher, and wishes he could go every day. As in weekends too. I think it’s safe to say Lou has a higher tolerance for stimulation than I do.  

“Yeah, I want to go forever!”

Eh, what does he know? He’ll be in full-time school, then work, for the rest of his life, does he really need to start so young? So I continued to hesitate…

But then one morning when I hadn’t slept well and I needed a few extra minutes to sip my coffee in silence, he asked me to play Paw Patrol with him in the basement. I decided that was it. I’d been doing roughly the same activities with a toddler for over ten years, ever since I quit teaching and we moved to Kansas City. I was done. I’m getting too old for this.

And honestly, I wasn’t loving the M-W-F spread of days. Do you know how many three day weekends the kids have? A lot! Which means Lou lost a Monday or Friday every time, cutting his attendance to only two days a week.

And I felt like I couldn’t get into a good work rhythm. Those Tuesdays and Thursdays that were spent negotiating with Lou, listening to Lou, answering Lou, playing with Lou were really messing with my head. He’s a talker. And he’s very confident. And nonsensical. With a unique vocabulary, even for a four year-old. Lots of appropriately used profanity and slang. 

I felt like I was having Lou hangovers on Wednesday and Friday mornings. Instead of sitting down at my laptop ready to bang out some blogs, I’d need a recovery day. I needed to untangle the web of illogic that Lou had spun in my brain the day before. Unable to find a groove for myself, my productivity was at an all-time low. And I knew it.

Finally, after at least a week of indecisiveness, I was ready.

Though I was still hesitant to bring it up with Tighe because I was worried he’d balk at the jump in tuition cost and I didn’t want to get my hopes up.

“I think we should do it. I think we should put him in full-time,” I said to Tighe, immediately cowering, panicked and fearful for absolutely no reason.

“Yeah, of course we should! We’re not doing him any favors here at home!”

My eyeballs cut from Tighe to Lou, who was settling into yet another episode of Paw Patrol, our go-to after lunch activity. He certainly has a type. 

“He’ll get more stimulation and play time at school,” Tighe continued, “plus he gets a rest time there which doesn’t include Paw Patrol.”

It’s true. Lou had even fallen asleep at school a handful of times, which was really helpful given our hectic after school schedules, late dinners, and even later bedtimes.

So we did it.

And the first full week was an overwhelming success! He never argued or seemed hesitant. I brought him to school late on Thursday so he could still go to his 9am swim lesson, which is pretty much his favorite activity. 

Who knows what Week Two will bring, but if it cuts back on our Paw Patrol consumption, boosts the likelihood of an academic scholarship some day, and earns Erin a little more Erin time, I’d say it’s an all-around achievement.

Fleas!

This one is about Rocket, the dog. The black and white pitbull-boxer-labrador-retriever mix who lives in our house. The animal shelter we heroically adopted him from five years ago billed him as a “lab mix.”

Which, I came to realize, is code for pitbull.  

“It’s not about the breed, it’s how they’re raised,” people assured me. 

“Treat him with love and you’ll get love in return.” 

Needless to say, our kids fell in love immediately. Tighe not so much.

So, we decided to keep him on a contingency basis. Any sign of aggression and he’d be gone.

But he was great! Affectionate, playful, adorable. And we hoped that Wally, his canine elder, easily the best behaved, most loving dog I’ve ever had, would keep him in line. Teach him the tricks, model exemplary behavior, and reprimand him when he got a little too wild or rambunctious. 

And for the most part, it worked. Next thing we knew he was an invaluable member of our family, and neither Tighe nor I could even fathom taking him back to the animal shelter. 

But then, a few months shy of Rocket’s first birthday, I found out I was pregnant with Lou, and whether it was hormones or my standard level of anxiety, I started having flashbacks to every single headline I’ve ever seen that involved a pitbull mauling a baby. 

“That would be bad,” I managed to convince Tighe.

So we invested several hundred dollars in dog training sessions at our house. We practiced lots of off-leash commands and calming tactics for both dogs. If we’re being honest, none of it stuck, but, as I do with most people, I enjoyed listening to the trainer’s life story, and Rocket and Wally enjoyed all the treats they were getting as rewards. So we kept at it. 

And at our last session, only a few short weeks from Lou’s due date, my growing belly and I pleaded with the trainer.

“Please tell me honestly. Do you have any concerns that he would be aggressive, that anyone who comes into our house, especially this new baby, would be in danger?”

“Oh, absolutely not,” she told me. 

She’s an expert. I trusted her. And she was 100% correct. 

When Lou was born, we did all the things you’re supposed to do to introduce a dog to a newborn and ease the dog’s apprehension. Tighe brought a blanket from the hospital for the dogs to sniff. We supervised them closely and made sure all their interactions were loving and amicable, not stressful.

Naturally, Wally was resentful and disinterested, as he always was with a new baby. But Rocket was curious and gentle, just like I’d hoped.

Which was why, as I made Rocket’s annual vet appointment last week, I made sure to schedule it for a time when Lou could join me. After all, he’s almost 4 now, and though his level of usefulness is up for debate, he’s passionate about Rocket, loves outings, and loves jobs and tasks. (He asked for a leaf blower for his birthday, bless his little heart)

When the big vet appointment day arrived, he asked me when we were leaving about a million times. And then he’d immediately remind Rocket, just to ease his anxiety.

“Rocket boy,” he’d say, “Erin says we have to leave in twenty minutes.” 

And as soon as I said, “Ope, Lou! It’s time to go!” he flicked off the episode of Paw Patrol he was watching, hopped down from the couch, and went to fetch Rocket.

Poor Rocket, who never goes anywhere, was nervous as heck. Unused to even riding in the car, he hopped in, glancing at me as he did so, as if to say, “Are you sure you meant me?”

He sat facing backwards in the second row captain seat, either not realizing that he was doing it all wrong or unsure of how to pivot his body around while the car was in motion. Lou found it all hysterical.

“It’s okay, Rocket boy, I’ll tell you what you’re missing.”

As though Rocket was just along for the scenic drive down Wornall Road. 

“He’s going to be scared,” I reminded Lou, “so I’ll need your help to keep him calm and tell him it’s okay.” 

“Got it!”

We sat in the exam room, waiting for the vet, while Rocket trembled and whimpered. The vet tech weighed him, took his heart rate and blood pressure, examined his prostate, and all the normal vet things. Except for the prostate thing, l guess. I don’t really know much about canine medical procedures. 

Aside from an updated rabies vaccination and general wellness check, I really wanted them to look at his skin. It was raw from scratching, with big patches where his hair was falling out. A few years ago, a previous vet had examined it and reported that it was an allergy. He told us it was likely seasonal—grass, perhaps?—and that there wasn’t much we could do except some occasional doses of Benadryl. 

So when his itching worsened this summer, I didn’t pay much attention to it; just upped the frequency of his Benadryl, assuming there was nothing else to do and we should just try to keep him comfortable. As morbid as that sounds. 

But this time, he was scratching until he bled. And the itching seemed non-stop, even keeping him up at night. 

When the vet knelt down, parting the hair with his fingers to get a closer look, Rocket startled and yelped while Lou patted him and spoke soothing words. Finally the vet grabbed a metal-toothed comb, and while Lou and I tried to keep him still, ran it across his back. 

“Ah-ha! Fleas! I got five of them right there in that quick swoop!”

“Bastards,” I whispered. I was disgusted, working backward in my brain, trying to recall the last time I administered his flea and tick prevention, and wondering how long he must have had them. 

But I was also partially relieved. Fleas are treatable! Controllable! Preventable! And they don’t really like to bite and bother people. 

And I felt guilty. I just kept blaming an acute grass allergy, kept ignoring all the scratching. This poor dog.

The vet sent us home with a hefty bill, some anti-allergy meds, medicated dog shampoo, a new, more effective flea prevention medication, and a to-do list. Deep cleaning, vacuuming, sanitizing, at-home grooming, dinner-making, all of it. Okay, the dinner making was a household request, not from the vet.

When we got home, Sam was at a friend’s house, Nate and Tighe were at football practice, and Tess was at soccer practice. Typical Thursday afternoon. And a perfect time for Lou and I to get to work. 

“We got this, Lou,” I said, offering a pep talk more for me than for him. Lou doesn’t need pep talks, he’s already pumped for any task the world throws at him.

“Alright, let’s start with the medication.”

I poked holes in the packaging while Lou fished some leftover chicken nuggets from the cheese drawer in the fridge. 

“I wish I could have some of these nuggets. With ketchup,” he said rather passively, probably hoping I’d toss one into his mouth.

“Uh, don’t,” I said. “Honestly, I don’t even remember when they’re from, so they’re probably not good anymore.”

I mean, good enough for a flea-ridden pitbull, but not for a three-year-old human.

I pulled the five nuggets from the bag, cut them into bite-sized pieces, and stuck them back into the plastic bag. Then I tucked two different pills inside some small pieces of the cold white meat, and gave them to Lou, who gave them to Rocket.

“Yessss!” Lou cheered. “He ate them! I can’t believe he ate his medicine!” 

“Well, overcome your shock, Lou. Now it’s time to give him a bath.”

I handed him the nugget bag and told him to bring Rocket upstairs. 

“Come on, boy,” he said, leaving a trail of small chicken pieces up the steps to the second floor. 

But that’s as far as Rocket would go.

Still shaken from the vet visit, he no longer trusted that Lou and I had his best interest at heart.

“Rocket boy!” he sang. “Come get in the tub!” 

He dug his fist into the bag and tossed all the remaining pieces into the empty tub.

Ew. Not exactly what I intended, but okay. 

“Come on, Rocket,” I ordered, ignoring his PTSD and swiping for his collar so I could drag him into the bathroom.

After three or four attempts, and a lot of verbal encouragement from Lou, I finally got hold of the worn blue collar and pulled him down the hall while Lou slammed the door, trapping him in the bathroom with us, his new sworn enemies. 

“Phew!” I was already exhausted. 

Now to get him in the tub.

I tried coaxing him with the nugget crumbs currently disintegrating on the bottom of the tub, but to now avail. He was officially unyielding. I was going to have to take him by force, with the help of Lou, my faithful assistant.

I scooped him up, all 60 pounds of him, and put him in the tub. It was awkward and clumsy, and I nearly broke my arm in the process, as I slammed my elbow down onto the porcelain edge of the tub. Not wanting to get flea dander on the plush bathmats, I had slid them out of the way, to the far corner of the bathroom. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but it kept me from getting any traction as I tried to wrestle the muscular beast. Together, we slipped and slid all over the tile floor.

Rocket’s very strong, and honestly, Lou wasn’t actually that much help. 

He was more the cheerleader type in this particular operation.

“You got it, Mom! It’s okay, Rocket boy! We’ll get you clean!”

Now I had Rocket in the tub, but he was so reluctant, that I had to pin him down with both arms. I realized I didn’t know where I’d left the shampoo, nor had I brought a towel. Each time I removed my arm from his back, he’d move to leap from the tub and I had to brace him with my shoulder.

“Lou!” I’d have to rely on Lou this time unless I wanted to wrestle Rocket into the tub all over again.

“Can you hand me the shampoo?”

“Sure! Which one?”

I couldn’t see it from my kneeling position next to the tub, and I didn’t trust Rocket’s complacency well enough to turn around and look for it.

“The new one we got from the vet. It’s a white bottle, it’s literally the only bottle in this bathroom. I either put it on the toilet… or on the sink… or on the floor…”

“Got it!” He was so triumphant.

I twisted off the cap with my mouth, only to realize it had a foil seal underneath.

How the heck am I going to manage this with one hand?

Fortunately, Lou knelt down next to me and was using both hands to massage Rocket’s head, telling him it’s okay, it’s just a bath.

It gave me just enough time to peel off the foil and pour it down his back, very gently so I didn’t startle Rocket. The directions recommended leaving it on for five to ten minutes, but I’d be happy with three. I don’t know whether it was the medicated shampoo, Lou’s tender dog whispering, or the gentle massage of the lukewarm water, but after a few minutes, Rocket seemed pacified.

As I rinsed off the suds, I remembered I didn’t bring in a towel.

“Lou, I need you to bring me a towel.”

“Okay! From the laundry room?”

There were two piles of towels in the laundry room at that moment. One pile of plush bath towels and another of pool towels still clinging to a fading sense of purpose in mid-September. I didn’t really want dog hair and flea dander on either one, but I remembered there was a faded red towel that was probably near the end of its life, so I told him to grab that one.

“Oh,” he said, disappointed, “but that one’s not really soft for Rocket.”

“Yeah, I don’t really care.”

And that was all the convincing it took. Lou ran and did as he was told, and together, we blotted Rocket dry and released him from the bathroom. Rocket did that desperate, exhilarated nose dive to the carpet that freshly bathed dogs do, while I unlodged soggy chicken nuggets from the bathtub drain. 

“Get him a treat, Lou!” Which happens to be one of Lou’s favorite activities. And Rocket’s.

I spent the next 24 hours deep cleaning, vacuuming, sanitizing, washing, and administering the next rounds of medications. The vet had predicted Rocket would be noticeably less miserable within two or three days, and I had to admit he was right! He seemed better the very next day. And hopefully his hair will grow back.

“As for the flea eggs,” he had told me, grimly, “that will take roughly seven to nine months to fully eradicate from your house. Vacuum constantly, wash everything as frequently as possible, bathe him regularly, and don’t give up on the preventative medicine.”

“Cool, cool,” I said, trying to remain as cool as possible as this glorified doctor assigned me more homework than I’d ever had in my life.

So, if anyone needs me (or Lou), we’ll be flea bombing our house for seven to nine months. Or putting it on the market. Or burning it to the ground. Either one. Anything for Rocket.

_____________________________________________________________________

Postscript. The next afternoon, around 4pm, I called Lou into the kitchen to help me give Rocket his next round of medicine. It was the exact same routine as the day before. One allergy pill and one pill to treat the already existing flea infestation on his body. I cut a cold chicken nugget in half and buried one pill in the meat on each side. Then I handed the first half to Lou. To give to Rocket. 

He paused. “What is this medicine for again?”

“To treat the fleas on his body.”

“Oh, right.”

And with that, he took the nugget and began rubbing it along Rocket’s backside, thus “treating the fleas.” At least, in his mind.

“Lou!” I couldn’t even believe what I was seeing.  “No! He needs to eat the pill!”

Was he messing with me? Or did he sincerely believe this stale chicken nugget massage would alleviate the itching?

I guess I could understand that misconception if this had been Lou’s first time doling out medicine to a dog. But between his heartworm meds, Benadryl addiction, and the doses of the same pills we’d given him the day before, I thought he had the hang of it. I thought he was an honorary veterinarian. But, alas, he’s just a three-year-old Amelia Bedelia.

73 Hours of Being Amish

“Noooooooo!” we all screamed at the same time.

Well, almost all of us. Nate had just scarfed some bacon and darted out the door to his friend’s house. And Tighe was on the phone in his office—presumably a professional work call—so he also did not join in our verbal anguish in the living room.

But for Tess, Sam, Lou, and I, the despair, the frustration, and the torment were quite acute. Enough to make us scream in unison. And I usually enforce a pretty strict Cone of Silence when Tighe’s on the phone.

Why, you ask?

Not because of the death of a loved one.

Not because a burglar had broken in and was holding Lou hostage.

Not even because someone had finished the last of the Trader Joe’s s’mores ice cream—delicious by the way—and stuck the empty carton back in the freezer.

Nope. It was simply because an afternoon thunderstorm had decimated our power.

The lights flickered only once and then it was just dark.

I mean, it was 1pm, so it wasn’t that dark. But the sconces in the living room and the dining room chandelier had been on to compensate for the dreary, overcast day, and suddenly, they went dark.

Which doesn’t seem like a big deal under normal circumstances, but our power had just been restored after 73+ hours of living an Amish lifestyle. That’s three solid days.

It started with a particularly violent thunderstorm on Friday afternoon. I had been at the pool with Tess and Lou and Tess’s friend, chatting in the shallow end with a handful of mom friends, each with a White Claw in hand. It was a lovely start to the weekend.

But as the dark clouds loomed overhead and thunder and lightning neared closer, the lifeguards, doing their job for the first time all season, blew their whistles, closed the pool, and sent us home.

As we drove home, I contemplated a stop at the store for one item that I can’t even recall at the moment, but at the last moment, I decided to steer the car home. And it’s a good thing I did because shortly after we arrived, things outside began getting pretty dicey.

Wind. The kind that swirled the tops of the trees around like they were stalks of seaweed in a fast-moving river.

Intensely hard rain that formed rapid moving rivers in our backyard and down the hill of our driveway.

Loud claps of thunder that boomed overhead, startling the kids and then rolling around in the clouds above us without end.

And lightning that lit up the ominously black afternoon sky. It was only 4pm. In July. How did it suddenly get so dark so fast?

Small limbs and sticks and clusters of green leaves were ripped off the trees and hurled to the ground with force

Tess and Lou ran to hide in the basement while Tess’s friend clung to me, asking anxious, fretful questions about how long the storm would last, whether we were safe, and when she could go home.

Meanwhile the lights kept flickering, just for a second or two at first, then gradually longer and longer intervals until they just went out altogether. And with each flicker, Tighe’s frustrated groans from his first-floor office where he was trying to work, got louder. He has an array of computer monitors in there, each plugged into the wall. I don’t know what he does in there, but he’s pretty dedicated to it and without his beloved screens, he can’t do it.

I stayed calm at the dining room table and tried to alleviate Tess’s friend’s fears, assuring her that I’d drive her home when the storm passed. It got violent pretty fast and just as quickly, the wind and the thunder and lightning eased, leaving us with a persistent drizzle.

And then that was it.

I gathered Tess, Lou, and her friend into the car, and as we drove the seven blocks or so to the friend’s house, we saw the damage. Trees and limbs down everywhere, some blocking streets, some landing on rooftops and cars.

When we arrived at Tess’s friend’s house, where they were also without power, the dad met me at the front door.

“That was intense!” he said. “I bet it takes several days to restore power.”

I wished right then he would shut the hell up.

Because he was right.

And honestly, the first 36 hours or so weren’t so bad. Even though Tighe and I had to cancel our anniversary date night. Sixteen years. Here’s some more adversity from the universe to celebrate.

But it really was kinda fun at the beginning. The storms crushed the heatwave we’d been having, so sleeping with the windows open was downright pleasant. I even donned a sweatshirt in the mornings. Unsure of how long the whole thing would last, but also knowing that we were low on flashlights and fearful of candles, *insert link* we headed to Costco, where we bought 8 flashlights, a slew of batteries and headlamps, beef jerky, cashews, and pistachios. Which became our dinner that night.

The kids played cards, read books, and enjoyed their four-person slumber party in the thermodynamically cooled basement so much that they pledged to sleep there even after the AC kicks on again. They even asked if we can start a tradition of “electricity-free nights” once a week.

Fine. I can agree to that. No screens, dim lighting. Sounds nice. But I refuse to unplug our refrigerators those nights. Or the hot water heater. I get that cold plunges are good for your skin and your heart and all, but I prefer hot showers, even in summertime.

I also prefer my own homemade coffee. The cold brew cans I grabbed at the grocery store out of desperation didn’t cut it. They’re making my hands shaky, jittery. I think I’ve developed a heard palpitation.

But it was Tighe who was really struggling.

The uncertainty of the first 12 hours just made him anxious. He usually works 7 days a week, so to close up shop early on a Friday afternoon AND not be able to do anything on Saturday either caused a mild depression to set in.

I’m not exactly sure what he does for a living, but it seems to be trying to take over the world, one plumbing part at a time. He’s relentless.

Fortunately, he was able to distract himself with the large limb—really, it was half of the tree—from one of the maple trees in our backyard that had twisted off in the storm and landed on our neighbor’s roof. So, he busied himself by commiserating with our neighbor, visually assessing the damage, checking our homeowner’s policy, and calling local tree companies, all of whom worked overtime that weekend.

It wasn’t fun, but it kept him busy and made him feel industrious. And watching the tree guys extricate the limb from the roof without causing any additional damage or killing themselves in the process turned into a fun family event.

Our neighbors on either side have generators, the big fancy kind that we declined to install after a big ice storm a few years ago. After a few bids, we decided we’d skip the big investment and risk the damages. And this was the first time I regretted that decision. Anyway, those neighbors let us charge our devices and store some perishables in their fridge. Which was amazingly generous and helpful!

So many friends and neighbors ended up surrendering and heading to hotels, but we were still pretty comfortable at home.

On Saturday evening, officially 24 hours after reporting the outage to the energy company, we were one of the only neighborhoods in KC without power. So we went to mass to pray for it. Tighe was getting really antsy, not being able to work on his beloved screens in his office, so I think the meditative quiet at church helped ease his tension.

Until we got to Culver’s, where Tighe ordered a double cheeseburger with grilled onions. Delicious, right? With a chocolate milkshake and fries to really drown his sorrows.

Well, Sam’s friend, our storm refugee for the day, accidentally grabbed Tighe’s burger off the tray and took a bite before we realized the mistake.

It might have been Tighe’s straw-that-broke-the-camel’s-back moment. Those plumbing parts he’s obsessed with were waiting for him somewhere in cyber space, and as his edginess bubbled over, he couldn’t even find solace in the double cheeseburger with grilled onions he’d been dreaming about.

But his anger explosion would take a backseat to the animated, excited chattiness of our kids, planning night two of their sleepover marathon. But first, they’d delight themselves with a refreshing cold shower. What a treat!

So Tighe’s tantrum was simply a string of muffled, sarcastic comments that they couldn’t even hear. Nothing was going to dampen the excitement of these future luddites!

After his ice-cold shower, Lou affixed his new headlamp to his head and bolted out the front door. I just happened to spot him out of the corner of my eye as I sorted towels in our master—er, primary—bedroom. I watched as he trotted down our sidewalk and turned left, past our driveway entrance.

“Lou!” I called through the screen when he’d gone just a bit too far. “Where are you going?”

“To say good night to our neighbor!”

“Oh,” I replied, pausing to take that in. “Why?”

“Because I love him!”

“Okay.”

I guess that makes sense.

Our neighbor, half of a married couple with five adult children, reported the rest of the story to me the next day. He was the one whose roof our tree tried to shatter, the one who was storing some of our produce in his fridge, and the one who let us charge our portable battery each day.

When he answered the door, Lou lifted his index finger—thank God it was the index finger—as if to pause him. With his other hand, Lou turned off the very bright LED light on his headlamp. After all, he didn’t want to be impolite, and he’d already heard from us multiple times how rude it is to shine such a light directly into someone’s eyes.

“I just wanted to say good night!” Lou said, just as he’d planned.

“Okay. And did your dad send you to get his battery?”

“Uh, yeah, sure.”

“Okay, come on in and I’ll get it for you.”

“Okay! And I just wanted to say good night to your dog. Good night, dog!”

Then Lou took the charger from him and made the twilight trek back home. He didn’t want to miss a single second of the sleepover—back to the basement floor for these lucky kids!

On Sunday, it rained again. Hard. Down poured. For hours.

When we were able to check the energy company’s website for an update, they predicted our neighborhood would be restored sometime on Monday, and they noted that today’s rain might set them back even further. Tighe almost cried.

But instead, he went to our country club to work out some stress, charge his laptop, and use their Wi-Fi while I took our kids to see the new Spiderman movie. Since I don’t really like superhero movies, I couldn’t really follow most of it, but there were some amusing jokes in there. I would have preferred Indiana Jones, but this power outage wasn’t about me. It was about our kids living their best lives.

For dinner that night, we grilled hot dogs and sausages, and I made a salad with spinach that was starting to slime—it was not one of the items chosen for our neighbor’s fridge. We ate in dim half-light in the dining room. It was grim. Tighe was on edge, and the kids, ever insensitive to anyone outside of themselves, were finally starting to pick up on it.

“I feel sorry for the 6th grade football boys that Tighe’s training tomorrow morning,” I texted to two of Nate’s friends’ moms. I had a feeling they were about to have the most difficult workout of their young lives.

Another friend, a few blocks over, texted: “I can’t take it anymore! I’m packing up and headed to my mom’s house to do some laundry and sleep in the AC tonight.”

How nice that she had that option. At that moment, I would have started searching real estate near my parents in Pennsylvania, but I didn’t want to waste my precious phone battery.

On Monday morning, about 65 hours without power at this point, we checked the website again. Their notorious outage map was shrinking, which meant they were making progress, restoring power to more and more households, but I couldn’t get any anecdotal proof of this. “We’re hoping to restore most of Kansas City by tonight, and whatever we don’t finish, we’ll push to Tuesday morning.”

Tighe groaned and dragged himself to the park to coach Nate’s football team while he brainstormed a plan to get some work done that day. So while I took the kids to the pool to swim and charge my phone, he headed to the public library. The same public library that I’ve taken our kids to every single week since we moved to Kansas City in 2013.

“That is a sketchy place,” he said when he returned home that afternoon. “I don’t think I’ll ever go there again.”

I was starting to get irritable myself. The dirty laundry was starting to overflow out of the laundry room, I was dying for some clean sheets on the bed, and even though we were trying our hardest to use paper plates and plastic utensils, the dirty dishes were accumulating all over the kitchen counters. And the thought of rotting food in our two refrigerators was starting to eat at me.

We need power.

Joe Rogan says it all the time: if you want to destroy this country, just kill our power grids. We don’t have the fortitude, nor the skills, to survive without all the luxuries and conveniences that electricity provides. We take it for granted.

And so, just before dinner on Monday, at 73 hours, our power came back on. We cheered in our house! Lou celebrated by flipping switches just to confirm they worked. The older kids put away their decks of cards and flocked to the basement TV. Tighe switched on his beloved monitors in his office and began typing away, probably a blog about plumbing parts or something.

My phone buzzed again and again with celebratory texts from neighbors and friends and family I’d been complaining to through our ordeal. I started the washing machine and the dishwasher almost immediately. And so joyfully!

And so, when the power went out again on Tuesday afternoon, about an hour after I’d finished restocking the fridge and folding the last the towels to completely catch us up in the never-ending laundry race, we were understandably devastated.

The good news is—and Tighe makes fun of me when I start sentences with that phrase—it didn’t last. About an hour later, it was restored. The utility trucks were still stalking our neighborhood, looking for problem spots and low-hanging limbs, soggy and weak from all the wind and rain the last few days.

I breathed a sigh of relief that our newly acquired groceries would be safe at least for the time being. But more questions remained: would we get through the rest of the summer without losing power again? How long will we go without a generator? How many more nights will the kids voluntarily sleep on the basement floor? And what happened to the quarter of the watermelon Lou was helping me cut up for dinner tonight? Is it hidden somewhere in the house or did it go to Heaven as he claims?

I have a feeling that’s a blog for another day.

Flipping the Bird

Well, summer’s here. And it’s hitting hard. In all the wrong ways. 

And I don’t mean to complain at all. The best part about all four kids being home all day in the summer is that it provides a lot of comedy. Also a lot of screaming, a lot of dirty dishes, and a lot of extra kids in and out of the house all day long. And sometimes into the evening. 

We have just enough activities to keep each person busy. But not too busy. Just a teeny bit of structure and routine interspersed with the trips, camps, lacrosse tournaments, and random, sometimes spontaneous, outings that characterize our summers. 

Except for Lou.

He’s still too young to walk to a friend’s house unsupervised, and I didn’t sign him up for any of the same preschool camps that I did for The Others. He’s already told me he misses his teachers and classmates and he’s asked me countless times how many more days until fall soccer starts. A lot of days, man. Sorry, Lou.

And when the big kids are at school all day, he lives the life any three year-old would dream about: Some play-centered preschool a few days a week. Regular outings to his favorite places. The lunch and breakfast that he chooses. The show that he selects. And a lot of one-on-one time with both me and Tighe. 

But now that everyone’s home, he fades to the background. Kind of. I should say, his privileges and demands and only-child lifestyle fade to the background. Because, like Jennifer Grey before him, he refuses to be put in a corner.

So his energy and his angst have been building. 

And it all came to a head at the end of the week when I took him to his regular Friday morning playgroup.

Except that I had Tess with me. Because she had been invited to a friend’s house that day and I was going to drop her off on our way home for an afternoon of swimming and pizza and girl talk and whatever else Tess does when she’s away from all these boys.

But at the playgroup, she was the oldest one there. Therefore, the coolest one there. And so the little four year-old girl that Lou plays with most frequently, week after week, started to gravitate toward Tess. 

It was not exclusive or anything. And definitely not intentional. They were still playing with Lou, too. But I noticed that Lou’s pretend play suggestions were getting ignored by his little friend, while Tess’s were accepted and revered. Her ideas were just so cool! And the little buddy-buddy relationship that Lou and the other girl usually share was unraveling. Suddenly, this third point in their friendship created more of a love triangle, naturally pulling some of the attention and admiration away from Lou.

His friend was enamored with Tess, and Lou was old news. 

Fortunately for the sake of our blogging entertainment, Lou is quite expressive. He kept scrunching his eyebrows and making a frowny face, no doubt frustrated by his seemingly disintegrating friendship. To a three year-old — and, incidentally, to middle schoolers as well — friendship shifts feel like the end of the world. 

But Lou’s a fighter.

He refused to take this lying down.

So when Tess and her new bestie trotted over to a far corner of the room to check on their imaginary veterinary patients, Lou scowled at them from afar.

Then he did what any jaded preschooler would do.

He took three brisk steps in their direction, stopped abruptly, and planting his feet, flipped them the double bird. 

That’s right, both hands. 

Two middle fingers in their direction.

And in case you were wondering, his flip-off style also includes a thumb extended out laterally, almost parallel to the ground. 

His execution was truly perfect. 

As was his timing.

Because I literally just finished saying to the little girl’s very sweet mom, “We just don’t discipline him the same way that we did the older kids, and he’s picked up a lot of bad habits.”

cue the double bird

The mom laughed at his grand, dramatic gesture. Fortunately. 

I was embarrassed, but relieved that she wasn’t offended. She was mostly shocked.

“I can’t believe that just happened!” she whispered.

Her little girl is her first-born, so she’s not been exposed to the same raunchy behaviors that Lou has been. Nate and his rising 6th grade friends, along with Sam and his rising 4th grade friends, have created a monster. 

Not that Tighe and I have really done much to prevent it.

In fact, Tighe confessed to me that he flipped off Tess and Lou earlier in the week. They had been playing outside, but were hovering by the sliding glass door that leads to his office. At one point, they banged on the door and demanded “14 bucks” for some reason.

Instead of ignoring them, he said, “You want 14 bucks? I’ll give you 14 bucks!” 

Then he raised the wooden blinds so they had a clear visual on him, reached into his pocket, and pulled out his own finger. Yeah, the middle one.

Tess gasped and then snickered, but Lou laughed so hard he could barely breathe. 

“Dad!” he wheezed as he ran inside to confront him, “Remember when you gave me the finger? That was so funny!”

And so commenced The Week of the Bird, when Lou used the vulgar gesture for everything.

“Lou, what do you want for lunch?”

cue the bird 

“Lou, get your pj’s on!”

cue the bird 

“Lou, did you make this mess?”

cue the bird

Because he doesn’t actually know what it means. He just knows it earns him some attention and a lot of laughs. 

It’s been funny, of course. But after the playgroup incident, when he flipped off this very sweet little girl who remains clueless as to his offense, it’s time to nip it in the bud.

Tighe’s threatened to cut off both of his middle fingers. Obviously, it’s a totally empty threat, but based on his frightened tears, it’s working. We’ve gone almost 22 hours now without any reports of Lou flipping anyone off. Granted, roughly half of those hours were spent sleeping, but still — baby steps. 

So I beg you all: if you catch him flipping someone off this summer — likely because he’s incensed by either the excessive summer heat or his status as the 4th wheel in our household — please go ahead and cut off the offending finger. After all, it takes a village.

Two Things are Certain: Destruction and Taxes

Every eleven years or so, I find myself really grateful we had kids. And no, I’m not talking about that disaster of a holiday we call Mother’s Day. Don’t get me started on that. 

I’m talking about that rainy Tuesday morning I call “yesterday” when Tighe and I welcomed two local property tax assessment officers—I have no idea whether or not they’re actually “officers,” but for the purposes of this blog, I will often refer to them as such—into our home. 

You see, the county has assessed our home to be worth way more than we paid for it, and more importantly, way more than we think it’s worth. I mean, it’s a great house, we love it, and we love its location. But if—and this is a big if—we were to sell it, we’d have to spend a substantial amount of money to get it ready to list. So, last month, we filed an appeal with the county, and they agreed to dispatch two of their highly esteemed investigative officers to our house to get a better feel for the home’s worth.

And that’s where my gratitude for my kids comes in. 

The two civil servants, who would become our best friends for the next twenty minutes or so, were very nice. But there wasn’t much they needed to do to realize our home was in shambles. The kids had already seen to that. 

“We just need to take some pictures of the bathrooms, the kitchen, and any holes or damage to the house,” the female officer explained.

And that—”holes or damage”—is where we’ll shine.

Do we even have enough time to document all that? I thought to myself.

Tighe walked through the house with them, practically step for step, helping them identify every hole, every crack, every nail pop. All of which there are many.

I popped up every few minutes to point out any of the defects that Tighe forgot. Those glaring imperfections that I dream of repairing, but that we’ll probably procrastinate on until we’re ready for our pending renovation. That renovation will be a huge milestone for us and we’re very dedicated to it. And for that reason, it’s difficult to spend time, money, and effort fixing every little hole in the plaster when we know that our architect has already planned for certain walls to come down. You know, in a year. Or two. Or three. Whenever we get to it.

And for the twenty minutes or so we spent with these two county bureaucrats, we wanted all those defects to stand out. Show how imperfect our house is. How worthless it is. In other words, lower our property taxes!

Fortunately, as I’ve alluded to, our kids have been living in that house just as long as we have. Three of the kids anyway. And then Lou, the most destructive one of them all, has been in there for over three and a half years. He’s already done more than his fair share of damage. Well done, Lou.

As they meandered through the house, scanning for deformities, destruction, and deterioration, I could hear Tighe offering up factual explanations, almost apologetically. 

“Oh, was that a water leak or something?” one official asked, pointing to an egg-sized hole in the plaster above the large entryway in the living room.

“No, that was my son. Practicing free throws with his basketball.” 

Tighe sounded sheepish on that first one. I don’t know whether he was embarrassed about the hole, embarrassed about the lack of discipline in our house, or embarrassed that the bureaucrat might figure out that free throws are Nate’s weakness in basketball. He’s a scrappy defender and a pretty good ball handler, but send him to the free throw line and you’re pretty much guaranteed a turnover. 

“How about, uh, all these?” he said, gesturing towards the chips in the plaster in the dining room walls, right at chair level.

“Oh, the kids,” Tighe replied. “They lean back in their chairs a lot.”

I mean, we tell them not to, of course.

“Don’t forget this!” I said, moving toward the fire damage still branding the dining room wall just above the buffet. 

“Electrical fire?” the man asked, already making a notation on his tablet.

“No! A candle exploded. It ignited Sam’s art project. The wall caught on fire, there was smoke all along the ceiling.”

And despite all our scrubbing, there are still soot stains in one corner of the ceiling. We’ll have to repaint that when we renovate. 

“Wow,” he murmured to himself.

And that was the moment Tighe and I started to take pride in each and every foible in our house. Instead of feeling embarrassed, we started to own them. 

“And here?” he was pointing to a missing window pane in the french doors to the sunroom.

“Another basketball incident.”

“And the black marks on the baseboards and trim on the doorframes?”

Our trim throughout the house is white, so all the black scuff marks about four inches off the floor are very noticeable. 

“Oh, that’s where the kids hit the walls with the hoverboard.”

I think those tax assessment officers were starting to sense the theme.

Tighe took them to the basement and showed him the multiple holes and gashes in the drywall. All wrestling fatalities. Limbs and other projectiles being tossed around, crashing through the crisp, fresh paint.

Upstairs I overheard them notice the shredded carpet at the top of the steps, which was a canine calamity, somewhere for Wally to claw frantically when his thunderstorm anxiety overtook him.

Then another hole in the plaster on the landing. No one’s ever owned up to that one. I’ve always imagined that it was Rocket, tearing down the steps with a little too much puppy enthusiasm, taking the corner too fast, and blasting through the wall.

The boogers on the ceiling in the guest room? I can’t name names because I never saw the actual transgression occur, but I’m assuming it was one of the kids from the days we had a bunk bed in that room. What better place to wipe your boogers than on the white ceiling? I don’t even know how to get those off, I guess we’ll just paint over them some day. 

The wobbly pedestal sink in Tess’s and Lou’s bathroom? Is it not normal to try to climb up on top of the sink while you’re brushing your teeth?

What about the half dozen or so baseball-sized holes in the plaster on the staircase up to the third floor? Remember Sam? From the dining room fire incident? Those are his personal destruction projects, which seem rather ironic since the opposite of destruction, construction and aesthetics—at least Lego-building and art—are two of his passions.

As far as the exterior of the house is concerned, I can’t really blame the kids for the leaky roof that needs to be replaced, nor the hole in the trim just below the roofline, which is inhabited at the moment by a family of birds. But I can blame Nate for the blistering wooden fence planks in the northwest corner of the yard that get pelted by lacrosse balls every afternoon. 

Let’s just say that after they departed our house, probably grateful to be out of the dilapidated dump we call a home, Tighe seemed slightly ecstatic as he shut the front door. 

“Well, I think it’s safe to say our house is about to be devalued,” he said to me. He was smug. 

Thanks, kids. We’re so grateful you live here. 

EDIT: Tighe is arguing that Sam is actually the most destructive child. He’s not wrong. It’s a very close race. 

Autonomy and The Couch

I need alone time. 

Not a lot of alone time. I still register as an extrovert on those useless personality tests. But I like alone time. To think. To get things done. To do what I want to do. 

Maybe more than alone time, I crave autonomy. Some choice. Some freedom. Some power and control in my life.

But this isn’t about me. It’s about them.

My roommates. Four of them anyway. 

Tighe’s abandoned me for the week. He’s in Florida, then the Bahamas because “travel’s so important to what I do.”

Hmm, that’s funny. I thought it was so important to what I do, too, but I digress. Again. Can you tell I have a little bit of pent up resentment?

I guess I should not have been surprised late last week when Lou woke up with a fever. It was TOPS week at the kids’ school, after all. TOPS stands for Tired Old Parents Sports and it’s a doozie, to say the least. As Tighe so eloquently described it, it’s the week when the parents turn into high school athletes again and the kids turn into orphans. While the parents are playing in a double elimination volleyball tournament in the school gym, the kids are roaming the playground Lord-of-the-Flies-style. Unsupervised, unregulated, with little regard for structure, nutrition, or bedtimes.

It must be nice to have such autonomy. 

There are fights, injuries, hurt feelings, later-than-usual bedtimes, tears and laughter—and that’s just the parents. By the end of the week, everyone’s exhausted, fueled only by concession stand hot dogs and snacks and very little sleep. Which is probably part of the reason Lou got sick. 

He was devastated when we told him he’d have to stay home from the penultimate night of TOPS! He loves the freedom and the socialization, not to mention the 6th grade girls he prowls around with. And somehow, I truly don’t know how, every time I saw him that week, which was rarely, he had a new bag of Cheetos. 

And so, that morning, while the big kids were at school but Lou was immobilized on the couch, Tighe and I still had work to do. A sick, needy, whiny Lou is an inconvenience to say the least. 

So we hired nature’s best babysitter for him: the TV.

Since he’s been obsessed with boxing lately—like wearing boxing gloves around the house, which is funny because he can’t do anything with those gloves on, like eat, hold toys, or wipe his butt—Tighe decided to queue up the 1974 heavyweight boxing match between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali. Every three-year-old’s favorite. 

And suddenly, somehow, all three of us watched it. The whole thing. All 90 minutes of it. I mean, I got up to make my coffee at one point, and Tighe had to field a few emails, but gosh, it was compelling. 

In other words, in an effort to entertain a sick child so we could each get some autonomy, we put something on TV and got so distracted that neither one of us moved. Though I did learn a little bit more about boxing. Like how long rounds last. And what a typical heavyweight strategy might be, round to round. And that at one point, Muhammad Ali winked at Joe Frazier, who was guest commentating just outside the ring. So that was a plus.

Anyway, despite the high fever, Lou recovered the next day and made a showing at the TOPS championship that night. Not that he watched it, he was busy doing whatever it is the kids do out on the playground. 

“What happens at TOPS stays at TOPS.” —Kid motto. 

We muddled through the rest of our weekend—soccer, lacrosse, rugby, a birthday party, the usual—but by late Sunday afternoon, Tess was not herself.

As in, feverish.

It’s important to note that by this point, Tighe had left for the airport for his very critical “work trip.”

Tess crashed on the couch and slept through dinner. As I leaned in to feel for a warm forehead, I smelled it, the foulest odor of them all. And groaned.

She had slept so hard that she peed on the sofa. And I don’t know what kinds of fluids she consumed that day, but it was a lot. 

This poor sofa. It could practically be a character in my blogs. It’s not that old, we got it the week before Lou was born, so three and a half years ago. Which is longer than most toys last in our house, I guess, and despite some strict ground rules when it was fresh off the delivery truck, it’s been through a lot. We even splurged on the one-year warranty and stain guard treatment, but it was no match for the onslaught of chocolate milk, pee, muddy shoes, vomit, dog hair, more chocolate milk, cheetos and taki dust, markers, and Sam. 

Like any good mom who craves autonomy, I carried Tess upstairs to her room, peeled off her soaked leggings and underwear, and helped her into bed.

I let her sleep in the next morning, a Monday, and while she and Lou enjoyed a leisurely bubble bath, I tried scrubbing the sofa. Again. And then I sprayed some Febreeze. Again. And lit a candle. And poured some essential oils into the diffuser. But for some reason, urine is the most stubborn of odors, so I went to borrow my neighbor’s upholstery steamer with some special odor-eliminating elixir.

With Lou’s pesky and totally unnecessary assistance, I spent almost an hour soaking and scrubbing and steaming that sofa! To the point that some of the stains, like 20%, disappeared! And the sofa only smelled like pee when I got really close and dug my nose into it. And who does that anyway?

But later that afternoon, as Tess napped in her own bed, she did it again. This time the urine flow woke her up, so she climbed out of her bed and into Lou’s. So then I had two mattresses that smelled like pee. And a sofa. There was also a fridge stench issue, but I think I resolved that with a fresh bowl of baking soda. 

Feeling defeated, I was craving the autonomy time that comes with each Tuesday morning. When all four kids are in school. And Tighe was still in Florida. So I knew I’d had the relatively fresh-smelling house to myself. I love those Tuesdays. 

So I was beyond disappointed on Tuesday morning when Sam reported a fever. I didn’t even use the thermometer, he was radiating heat, his face was flushed, and his eyes were glazy-er than a glazed donut. A high glazed donut. Mmmm delicious.

“Ok, Sam, you can definitely stay home,” I told him, draping a blanket over his lanky body laying on the couch. Yes, THE Couch. But a different cushion.

And he almost immediately dozed off into a restless fever sleep.

But Nate and Tess, not to be left out, also began moaning woefully. Nate had just inhaled a full bowl of cereal and two pieces of toast and Tess had just ordered a waffle from the housekeeper—you know, me.

They sure didn’t seem sick.

“My head kinda hurts and I just feel like crap,” Nate said.

“And I’m just sooooo tired,” Tess said, shoving her plate away and curling into a ball on the sofa. 

“Okay, but you need to get dressed to go to school,” I replied to her, sliding the waffle back in her direction.

“Ughhhhh,” she wailed and believe it or not, had the nerve to actually fall asleep.

“Tess!” I hate disturbing a sleeping child, but somebody had to stand up for The Couch. “Don’t you dare pee on that couch again!”

But she was already asleep. I turned to Nate and felt his forehead. He wasn’t nearly as warm as Sam, but it’s not like him to bow out of school. He doesn’t like missing school work or recess drama. 

“Fine, whatever.” 

I couldn’t deny that Sam was sick, so as long as I had one kid ruining my day of autonomy, I might as well have three. 

And those three held their fortification on The Couch for the remainder of the morning, while I woke Lou, shoveled some breakfast at him, and drove him to school. Three kids at home is one thing, but three kids and a Lou is another can of worms.

Eventually, I convinced Sam to take some medicine and sip some fluids while warning him about the newly established sanctity of The Couch on which he was sprawled. Not that he really had the energy to tarnish it. 

He was pretty impaired, so I was gentle and patient with him.

Not so much with the other two. 

Tess, definitely well and cured of the autonomy-stealing virus, kept feigning naps. Every time she and I made eye contact, she held it for way too long in the way that a guilty party does, trying to determine if they’ve been made. 

“I think you’re lying,” I told her bluntly while gingerly lifting Sam’s head so he could sip some water through a straw. 

Nate, on the far side of the couch, deeply engrossed in a book, blurted, “I think I’m lying.”

Sam and Tess turned to stare at him. Then at me.

Feeling three sets of suspicious/questioning eyes on him, he glanced up. And immediately realized what he said.

“I mean,” he stammered, “that’s not what I meant! I really am sick!”

“Okay, sure, whatever.” I had resolved that even if he wasn’t sick, he probably would be soon enough, so we might as well hunker down and let it ride. 

Eventually the books they were reading must have gotten boring because the three amigos banded together to ask the inevitable, “Can we have screens?”

“Um,” I paused with genuine consideration, “no. Not yet. You can have screens for an hour AFTER we watch something together that I want to watch.”

Of course anything I wanted to watch probably isn’t very kid-friendly, so I began googling “best documentaries for kids.” We might as well make this sick day educational. And slightly autonomous.

Let me tell you, there are so many good documentaries for kids! I scrolled through listicle after listicle trying to find something age-appropriate for all three and something that they’d truly be interested in. 

Nate loves history and sports. Sam loves art and science. And Tess loves fashion and… I don’t know, unicorns or something.

I found something about the Holocaust that had won a lot of awards, but it sounded a little too horrific for Tess. And she definitely wouldn’t enjoy the one about the vastness of the solar system that Nate and Sam would have probably appreciated. Also it was almost three hours long and I wanted something that would end before I went to pick up Lou.

Finally I settled on a documentary about poverty in Guatemala. 

Perfect. 

And for the most part, it was. 

It featured four American college students who immersed themselves in a tiny rural village in a jungle in Guatemala for four weeks. Which was pretty admirable considering that by the end of the month, they’d each lost 20 pounds, were covered in flea bites, and suffered all kinds of GI issues, one of which became dangerously acute. At any point, you know they could have whipped out their US passports and called it quits, back to the relative luxury that is America.

Nate and I both teared up watching these families struggle to put food on the table through only subsistence farming, which was often plagued by destructive floods and pests. Their kids were malnourished and many had to abandon their educations so they could help support their families.

“These guys get to leave!” Nate gulped, pointing at the Americans, “but these kids—this is forever for them. They can never escape!”

Sam, being Sam, didn’t say much. He was huddled on The Couch, still draped in a blanket, but he was watching. Or he was having fever hallucinations, it’s hard to tell.

But Tess. Because most of the movie was in Spanish and an indigenous dialect, there were a lot of subtitles, and Tess struggled to keep up.

I tried my best to read them aloud, but I was engrossed too, so sometimes I forgot. And she didn’t fully comprehend that I was reading them to her, so there was a lot of confusion.

“When I was a girl, I wanted to be a nurse…,” I read from the screen.

“You did?” Tess was incredulous about my non-existent career goals.

“...but I had to quit my studies to work in the fields…”

“Wait, why?” Her confusion persisted. 

“Not me, Tess! I’m talking about the woman on the screen!” 

I had promised/threatened to prompt them with some comprehension questions afterwards, but by the end of reading an hour-long movie script to Tess, I was exhausted. 

I got up from The Couch to retreat to the kitchen when I heard Sam gasping.

“Sam! What? What is it?”

But I already knew.

I rushed to the bathroom, grabbed the small plastic trash can, and rushed back to shove it in his face. My timing was perfect—at 40, I’m still fast—but in our mutual desperation, somehow Sam and I fumbled the trashcan and though most of the vomit did in fact land inside of it, some of it hit the cream-colored fleece throw blanket and, you guessed it, The Couch. 

Not a lot. Not enough to run to the neighbor’s and borrow the steamer again, but enough that I googled “new sectionals” that night. Let’s just put this guy out of his misery. He’s probably yearning for some autonomy.

That night, everyone was in bed by 7:04pm. Well, Lou, the healthiest one of the bunch, crept back down to watch some crime drama on network TV with me. I probably should have sent him back to bed or changed the channel—the morgue scene certainly elicited a lot of questions—but it was the closest I’d been to autonomy in several days.

Church Loser of the Week

Obviously, I’m no marriage expert. In fact, I’m not really an expert in anything, even the areas that I could potentially be an expert in. Like education. Or child development. Or sarcasm. Or convincing young children to eat a vegetable. 

But, back to marriage. I think it’s important to praise your spouse when praise is deserved. 

And with Tighe, it’s often deserved. Not just as a husband, but as a father. And I realized I haven’t dedicated a post to him since his Lotion Robot days, circa 2015.

But he is a pretty phenomenal father. While I’m barely holding it together in between carpools, hectic mealtimes, ever-accumulating laundry, and perpetual kitchen cleanup, Tighe’s intentional.

As in, he thinks about things before he says them. He contemplates disciplinary actions. He weighs the pros and cons of reward systems and rules. Before signing them into Greenhalgh Law. That, sir, is a mouthful.

I, on the other hand, simply react. For me, it’s a matter of short-term survival. I’m living my life in 10 to 15 minute increments, ever-reaching for the next chance to be myself. To eat a meal uninterrupted by spilled milk or quarreling siblings. Yearning for 5 more minutes to listen to my podcast. Or text back a friend. Or return an email. Or even just to sneak a Reese’s peanut butter cup without anyone whining that they want one too. 

But for Tighe, he’s playing the long game. He’s mindful of the fact that we’re in the process of raising (hopefully) good humans—good adults who are kind, considerate, generous, compassionate, tenacious, and hard-working. 

Which brings me to my next point: church attendance. Or church behavior. Or whatever you want to call it. 

We’ve moved beyond the point where our mere presence is sufficient. When we were toddlers, all in diapers and nap-dependent, that was enough. Show up, cause a scene, check it off our Sunday to-do list.

But now. Now that three out of four are school-aged and attend all-school mass on a weekly basis, where they’re expected to sit still, stay quiet, and exhibit generally good behavior, it’s time to take it to the next level. 

The level where behavior and attentiveness matter. 

Back to our parenting styles. While sitting quietly in a pew, surrounded by my offspring, I’m inclined to pinch a squirmy nine year-old. Or shush—loudly, of course—a whispering six year-old. Because I react. And then I question, quietly to myself, why we’re even there. 

To kill 60+ minutes? I know that’s not the reason. Because with four kids playing spring sports, all with friends who like to host an occasional birthday party, our weekends are already pretty jam-packed.

To entertain people around us? Well, that can’t be the reason either. We had a woman recently turn around during the consecration, glare at all the families with young children seated in the rows behind her, and mouth, quite visibly, the words, “what the hell?” I admit that sometimes I’m overly sensitive to the perceived judgments of others, but this woman’s condemnation could not be mistaken. 

So why are we there, week after week, making enemies? 

But Tighe has it all figured out. He’s planned ahead, anticipated the misbehaviors, the squirminess, the fidgets, the whispers, the eyerolls. And now that our kids have a little bit more self-control and self-awareness, they eat up his plan every week. 

It starts in the car on the way home. Everyone has to deliver the “message,” or the lesson, they learned during that church service—in reverse age order, from youngest to oldest. Lou’s are always silly and nonsensical, usually something to do with poop or farts.

After a good laugh at Lou, Tess reports some three or four-word message that she gleaned from the very colorful kids’ message guide. And Nate and Sam repeat something verbatim they heard the priest say during the homily, ranging in meatiness from the most trivial anecdote from the priest’s biography to an absolutely esoteric and mystical snippet that theologians still can’t agree upon. 

Then come the behavior rankings, first through fourth place, awarded to each kid. The winners always rotate between Nate, Sam, and Tess. Lou doesn’t stand a chance. Because he’s busy scaling the white pillars at the end of the pew. Or crawling on the floor. Or hurling toys down the aisle. He takes a bathroom break to the farthest bathroom, the one in the basement. It takes longer to get there than it takes to actually use the bathroom. And of course, Sam supervises those expeditions. 

When the weather’s nice, Lou takes a trip outside to the courtyard. There are always a few wandering kids and parents out there, taking a break from the stuffy onslaught of religion. 

Regardless, Lou always earns 4th place. It’s practically his default setting. Except the one time he fell asleep in my lap, but that almost didn’t seem fair. 

After everyone’s buckled in their seatbelts and we’re pulling away from the curb, Nate, Sam, and Tess anxiously await their weekly rankings. The winner gets to pick a movie or show to watch that night. Or a dessert to have after dinner. 

The Loser, on the other hand—and we don’t really count Lou since he’s always in last place—has to either return to church at a later time or watch a church service online.

What our kids don’t realize is that (a) there is no later service at our church, and (b) if there was one, it’d actually be inconvenient for Tighe and I to drive them there, so we’d probably never follow through. Maybe. But probably not.

There is, however, a church about ten minutes away that offers a Sunday evening mass, and I bet it would only take one time to drag that week’s Church Loser to said mass to improve all-around behavior significantly. So we’ll keep that in our back pocket—maybe for when Lou’s a little less volatile. 

But the option to watch something online is usually our go-to. And actually, thanks to covid #yay4globalpandemics, there are tons of kid-friendly options out there. Like, with animated gospel readings and dynamic, captivating homilists. A far cry from the actual mass at our church.

[If we were chatting in person and my daily cup of coffee hadn’t worn off yet, this is where I’d drone on about the failure of most churches, though not all, to stay relevant to young families. It’s best not to get me started on my own personal, “the church is wrong,” self-righteous tangent. Tighe’s heard it once or twice. Times a million.]

Anyway, Church Loser of the Week, has to adequately complete Tighe’s off-the-cuff oral exam to make sure they learned something besides “don’t brawl with your brother at church.” It works pretty well. 

And you know how a lot of parenting experts say, “don’t negotiate with your kids?” Yeah, we don’t follow that advice. We negotiate.

So, if Church Loser approaches us and says something like, “instead of watching online church, can I rake leaves?” Or fold laundry. Or clean the basement. Or repaint the crown molding. Or feed the hogs. Or get a job. We would surely be open to those terms. 

I’m not saying Tighe and I are winning at parenting. In fact, we’re definitely losing on many fronts. Like, Sam is literally playing with matches as I type this sentence. And Nate’s drawing vulgar cartoons instead of finishing his homework. And neither one is gathering his rugby equipment like I asked.

But we feel like winners after church—and admittedly that could simply be the sugar high from our weekly Sunday morning cinnamon rolls. And that euphoria lasts until we walk through the kitchen door of our house and see all the breakfast dishes that we abandoned in an effort to get to church “on time.” Which is any time before communion.

Way to go, Tighe. You’re a good dad.

The Pink Eye That Wasn't

It had been one of those days of non-stop failures. Or that’s what it felt like anyway. Though it was a Saturday, so we got to sleep in. But pretty much everything after that was a fail. 

First, I missed a coffee date with a friend because I had accidentally left my phone on silent. 

Then, I dropped off Tess at a birthday party WITHOUT a gift.

That afternoon, when Tighe tried to return a fairly large appliance, Walmart wouldn’t accept it.

And then there’s the cluster of Nate’s new Apple watch. Tighe wasn’t able to activate it without the IMEI number, but he couldn’t fetch the number without activating the watch. Then the activation fee and monthly charge were going to be much more expensive than the original quote, but when he went to return the watch altogether, the store wouldn’t accept it.

And finally, Target didn’t have the tiny Lego mini-figure that Tess had been saving up for. Which was so trivial, but it just felt like icing on the proverbial cake at this point. But it was a gross cake. Gluten-free. And the icing didn’t even have sugar. 

Later, Tighe described the day as “a lot of busy work with nothing to show for it.” The satisfaction one usually gets from crossing items off a to-do list was totally absent. By three o’clock, we’d accomplished very little aside from a load of laundry and a growing pile of dishes in the kitchen sink.

At some point in that Day of Defeat, I noticed that Sam’s right eye was slightly bloodshot. And the skin around it was pink.

“Sam, does your eye itch? Or hurt?” 

“No, why?” At which point he immediately started rubbing his eyelid.

“Don’t touch it! Tighe, does this look like pink eye?”

“Yeah, it does.” Tighe replied, barely looking up from one of his three computer screens. 

I’ve been crying Pink Eye Wolf since Nate was two weeks old and he had a clogged tear duct, causing that classic conjunctivitis gunk in one eye. Since that day eleven years ago, I’ve asked Tighe at least once a month if he thought [insert kid’s name] had pink eye. And Tighe always says no and he’s always been right. In fact, in eleven years of parenting eight different eyeballs, we’ve only had pink eye one time.

So when Tighe certified my pink eye suspicion on that Sinking Ship Saturday, I knew it had to be true. I didn’t want it circulating through the house, I didn’t want it to ruin our upcoming travel plans, and I really didn’t want to cancel Sam’s sleepover scheduled for that night. 

I texted the doctor and asked her if she could call in a prescription. Which she did within the hour. I waited about thirty minutes, set Tess and Lou up with a snack, and headed to the pharmacy.

“We don’t have any record of that prescription,” the clerk told me, “but you can check back on Monday.”

“Monday?” I whined. “But we’re leaving town.”

“Yeah, sometimes it takes doctors’ offices a little longer on the weekends.”

“But the doctor called it in herself.” I pleaded.

The elderly man behind me was leaning on his tiny grocery cart, shifting uncomfortably from one leg to the other. I sensed he was in pain—his audible grunts were either passive-aggressive or totally authentic, and either way, they made me feel guilty and entitled—so I stepped away from the counter. 

I texted the doctor that they didn’t have a record of the prescription and asked if there was an over-the-counter option we could try in the meantime.

“That means they just haven’t listened to their voicemails,” she texted back. “Try again in a few minutes.”

I meandered through the store and gathered a handful of other items we kind of needed. Maybe I could salvage this Sorrowful Saturday and make it semi-productive after all.

By the time I returned to the prescription pick-up line, there were five or six people ahead of me. 

So I waited. Patiently. 

I texted my neighbor, a nurse, to ask if she had any extra pink eye drops in her medicine cabinet. She has quite the medical arsenal. You need gauze, she’s got gauze. Amoxicillin, she’s got it. Butterfly stitches, definitely. Defibrillator, probably. But she might bill your insurance for that last one.

“Who has pink eye?” she wrote back.

“Sam.”

“Then why is he at my house??” 

Because I’m at CVS and Tighe didn’t think to quarantine him, I thought to myself. 

When I arrived at the front of the line again, I explained the situation and told a different clerk that I’d just texted the doctor and she confirmed that the measly little eye drops should be in their system.

She tapped away on her computer and pulled it right up.

“What’s his date of birth?” she called to me.

I told her.

She frowned, clearly puzzled, and turned back to the screen.

“What’s his date of birth again?”

I repeated his numerical birthdate. Slower this time. Then repeated it to myself in my head, just to confirm. Was I wrong? Did I mix up the kids’ birth years or something? But no, some quick subtraction told me that I was correct.

“That’s not what we have on file. The insurance company has something different.”

“Um… does Sam not exist?”

I realize that’s not exactly the verdict she was relaying to me, but wouldn’t that be fitting? That insurance companies don’t recognize Sam? Sam of all people. Somehow he thwarted the system. He’s off-grid. Does the federal government even know about him?

“It looks like just a typo. Someone at the insurance company must have typed the digits backwards—they’re just flipped. But they won’t cover this, you’ll have to pay out of pocket today. And then you’ll have to call the insurance company, correct the date in the system, and have them reimburse you.”

“Okay,” I sighed. Another bust on today’s scoreboard. “How much will it be?”

“Fifty-three dollars,” she reported back. Not exactly enough to ruin our credit or anything, but way more than it would have been with insurance.

“It’ll probably take another ten to fifteen minutes,” she told me.

I took my other toiletry items to the front register and paid for them. Then I called Tighe.

“Sam’s off-grid. He’s not even in the system,” I reported.

“What?” he said. He was still irritated from his Day of Defeat. 

I told him what happened.

“So why didn’t you just tell him that the other date was his birthday? That you misspoke.”

Silence. Gee, why didn’t I think of lying? To big pharma, the most powerful entity in the entire world. Also, that feels like insurance fraud.

Just then I got a text that his eye drops were ready.

I went back to the counter, ready to be done with the pharmacy. The clerk looked at me like she’d never seen me before, and when she asked for Sam’s birthdate, I hesitated. The real one? Or the fake one? 

I guessed real and I was right. 

She turned back to rifle through the big basket stuffed to the brim with little white pharmacy bags each with their own little vials of poison or medicine or drugs or placebos or whatever. 

“Hmm,” she muttered, still flipping through the white bags, checking each one for Sam’s initials. She reached the bottom of the basket and then moved it to reach a second basket beneath the first, also filled with white bags. Finally, at the bottom of the second red basket, literally the last white bag in the whole pharmacy, was the little bottle of Sam’s eye drops. 

Which meant… it had been ready this whole time? I’ve been wandering around aimlessly, like Sam in the insurance company’s system, for thirty minutes and his eye drops have just been sitting in a basket on the floor there?

When I got home a few minutes later, I unpacked the $53 eye drops and began pulling ingredients for dinner from the fridge. I peeked at my phone and had a text from my Neighbor Nurse.

“I don’t think it looks like pink eye. Might just be spring allergies. Or maybe Lou poked him in the eye.”

Checkmate, Saturday of Exasperation.

“Well then, send him home so I can give him his $53 eye drops for absolutely no reason,” I typed back.

If I accomplished nothing else on that day, I successfully administered a round of eye drops. And poor Sam hated every second. 

UPDATE #1. Nope, not pink eye. Three days and only three rounds of successful eye drops later, and his eye is totally fine. Setback Saturday strikes again.

UPDATE #2: Nate spent the night at a friend’s house that night and we found out the friend he shared a bed with was home vomiting all day on Sunday. It turned out to be a food allergy, thus not contagious. What a relief. 

UPDATE #3. On the day I’ll call “Winning Wednesday,” the insurance company agreed to reimburse us for the drops.

UPDATE #4: Upon arrival in Florida for Easter a few days later, we found that my niece was throwing up and my nephew had a double ear infection. So after all that trouble to fend off illness before our trip, we ended up walking right into it.

Not Another Rodent Infestation

Something traumatic happened to me on Friday night and I’m not even sure that I’ve recovered enough to write about it just yet. But I’m going to try. It will be therapeutic. A chance for me to process my anguish and reflect on the damage. Please bear with me.

It was almost 8:30pm. 

Tighe and I had just made sure that everyone was tucked in their beds upstairs and retreated back to the sofa in the living room to watch some March Madness basketball. Creighton, Tighe’s alma mater, was playing Princeton, and he didn’t want to miss any of it. Which is why we put the kids to bed slightly earlier than we typically would on a weekend.

Tighe was already on the couch, fully engrossed in the game, by the time I reached him. Lately, I’ve been using my phone to play bedtime meditations for Tess and Lou for a few extra minutes. Tess loves them and they lull her to sleep pretty easily. 

Lou, on the other hand, ever the CEO of some yet-to-be-determined corporation, sees this as a chance to squeeze in a few extra minutes of work. Not ready to fully relax yet or surrender to his sleepiness, he sits upright in his bed, with a flashlight and a “seek-and-find” book. 

“Mom!” he’ll whisper to me in the dark. “I can’t find this fish.”

When I ignore him, he inevitably says, “Oh, there it is!”

And continues with his work.

So by the time I kiss them both goodnight and leave their room, Tess is pretty much seconds away from unconsciousness and Lou’s still busy.

I crept down the steps, grabbed my mug of herbal tea from its designated spot on the counter, and plopped down on the couch.

Oh, wait. First, I let Rocket inside and led him to his crate in the sunroom, which is an important detail. pulling the French doors shut behind me. He doesn’t like the noise from the living room TV to interrupt his sleep. 

I was about to open my laptop to also squeeze in some extra work. You know, like my three year-old son—when I heard heavy breathing.

More like sniffing, scratching, like the noise I imagined a wild boar would make, its nose to the ground foraging for mushrooms. Or at least I think that’s what they do. I don’t really know a lot about wild boars.

It sounded like when Rocket detects the nest of baby bunnies that live under our back porch every spring. He presses his black canine nose to the brick red wooden floorboards and sniffs up and down each crack in a back and forth motion, leaving a trail of wet snot.

“What the—?”

I thought I’d imagined it. Tighe didn’t hear it, but he was pretty zoned in on the basketball game. 

But then I heard it again.

Deeper this time. And louder. Closer.

I looked back at the French doors to make sure I had, in fact, put Rocket to bed. Was he the one making that noise?

Yep, the doors were closed. So it wasn’t Rocket. 

The sniffing, snorting noise was behind me. Definitely inside the house. Definitely getting louder.

It sounded like a raccoon. Or a possum. Have the chipmunks returned, seeking revenge after all these years?

How did it get in our house? Was it rabid?

I looked at Tighe. He heard it now, too.

I leapt up onto the sofa, breaking my cardinal rule of sofa ownership: No shoes on the sofa. Also, no food or drinks. But no one seems to follow that loosely enforced rule.

[I also have a policy about not putting one’s shoes on the dining room table, but as I type these words, there is a toddler sized pair of black and white Adidas’s just inches from my laptop.]

My heart was racing.

I was in a squatting position bouncing on the sofa, ready to either pounce on a giant, rabid rodent or run from a giant, rabid rodent. I guess it would depend on just how big it was.

I looked around for some sort of weapon like a broom or a lacrosse stick, but for once in my life as a parent, there were no such weapons within my reach.

Nope, me and this rodent were going to have to go to blows MMA-style. I assumed Tighe would have my back and although he took 6 weeks of Brazilian jiu-jitsu when we lived in Baltimore, I was not confident in his fighting ability. 

As usual, the colossal responsibility of defending the house and the family against all types of foes would fall to me.

I was ready. 

I heard the sniffing again. 

Behind the sofa? On the floor!

I looked down.

And shrieked!

And there, crouched down at the back corner of the chaise lounge was a very smiley, very hysterically laughing Lou.

“What the—?”

Tighe, who still hadn’t budged from his seat, looked to me, wondering whether he should panic or hide or call 911 or return to the game or pop some popcorn or fetch one of those aforementioned weapons that seem to be just about everywhere in our house. 

“It’s Louis!” I said flatly but sternly. “Your son.” 

As if we know multiple Louis’s.

He had crept down the steps in complete silence and snuck around the backside of the first-floor loop. Through the dining room, through the kitchen, through the breakfast nook that we don’t use as a breakfast nook, and planted himself on the floor just behind the sofa, sniffing for some reason.

I sighed with relief, but I was also mad. In an effort to sleep well at night, I try to minimize cortisol spikes during the day, and especially ones so close to bedtime. But now my heart was racing and I had nearly pooped myself.

“What are you doing down here?”

He walked in a giant circle around us, smirking and alternating his eye contact between me and Tighe. Kind of the way boxers circle each other in the ring before one starts swinging. 

“Um, I just wanted to put that ball on the bench.”

He was referring to the six-pound medicine ball that was on the floor of our living room for some reason. 

He had picked a totally random task that absolutely did not need to be completed. Ever. We don’t keep the medicine ball on the window seat. We don’t really keep it anywhere. The kids just kind of pick it up off the floor at arbitrary intervals and toss it into the air or at one another. Must be nice to have that kind of energy. I can’t pick up anything off the floor without a groan, a pulled hamstring, or a slipped disc.

“Oh no,” Tighe said to him, feigning genuine sympathy, “since you came down after bedtime, now you don’t get screen time for an entire week. That’s seven days.”

The smirk suddenly left Lou’s face and jumped to Tighe’s, who realized he had won.

“But if you go up to bed right now, I’ll pretend I didn’t see you.”

The look of alarm on Lou’s face turned to determination as he jumped to and sprinted out of the room and up the steps. He put himself back to bed and we didn’t hear from him for the rest of the night.

So, I guess it wasn’t that traumatic after all. After twenty minutes or so, my heartbeat stabilized and I slept through the night just fine. I finished my tea while it was still hot and finished a good chunk of the laptop work I had aimed to complete that night. Creighton won and moved onto the Elite Eight for the first time in school history. 

And all was well until 7am the next morning when Tighe left for his weekend retreat so that I could handle the three birthday parties, four rugby games, and one lacrosse game on our schedule all by myself. Which might be more trauma than any rabid rodent, real or imagined, could ever cause.

Password: Recovered!

Is there a more valuable life skill than figuring out how to recover a lost password? 

I submit that there is not.

If there’s one type of experience that has shaped me into the nearly middle-aged woman I am today, it’s receiving that little bit of red script on a sign-in page that says “email or password incorrect. Please try again.”

These are the moments that turn girls into women. Boys into men. 

It’s the moment of truth. When decision-making and problem-solving skills are suddenly tested for real.

You have to decide: Do I call it quits and ask them to text me a numerical code that I can use temporarily, for exactly 12 seconds before it self-destructs? Or do I rotate through a series of potential passwords that I know I’ve used on other apps and websites? Sometimes I throw in a $ or &. Other times, I capitalize certain words in my stock password selection. Or change the number by a digit or two.

But I don’t want to reveal too many state secrets here. My password procedure is my password procedure. Mind your business. As someone who maintains fairly regular posts on my personal blog, I clearly value privacy.

Anyway. So when this life-altering event happened to Nate a few weeks ago, Tighe and I swelled with pride.

Our little guy was about to become a man. 

He couldn’t log into his school email and check his assignments. Or whatever he uses his school email for, I’m actually not really clear on that piece. 

So first, he went to Tighe.

“The password is two words,” he said, “and the first word is ‘secret.’”

“Okay,” Tighe said, trying to be helpful. “So… secret…? Secret what?”

“I don’t know!” Nate was already exasperated and, realizing that he might not be able to complete his English assignment, was starting to panic.

Together, this powerful father-son duo sitting at the kids’ computer in the basement, brainstormed dozens of possible password iterations. 

Secret Lou.

Secret thing.

Secret password.

Secret secret.

Secret gnome.

It took all evening. And none of the password attempts worked. Obviously. Why would he keep trying after recalling the correct one?

By bedtime, Nate surrendered to the fact that he’d probably have to talk to his teacher in the morning, confess that he couldn’t recall his password, and thus not hand in the assignment on time. 

But Nate, increasingly self-aware, knows that his brain is a little fresher in the morning, so he set his alarm for about 15 minutes earlier so could make one last attempt.

Still, no luck. And he was starting to envision his upcoming conversation with his English teacher. She’s very nice and he likes her a lot, but she’s demanding. 

But he had one last trick up his sleeve: Sam.

Sam, ever oblivious to the goings-on around him, had hopped down the steps and plopped down on the sofa ready to attack the small sliver of toast he eats every morning, not a care in the world. 

Nate was still brainstorming out loud, throwing out all kinds of possibilities for that evasive second word. He had finished his breakfast, but in one last act of desperation, said, “Sam, do you know what my password is? It’s ‘secret something.’”

“Secret penis!”

“Sam! That’s it! You’re a genius!”

It was right. Nate logged in immediately, fetched the assignment, and made the necessary edits with time to spare. How did Sam guess that, totally out of the blue??

Great minds think alike, I guess. 

Or perhaps Nate and Sam are so co-dependent that they form one brain between the two of them.

It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve collaborated on a homework assignment, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. 

That morning, they both became men, problem-solving a password firewall for the first time ever.

Together they’ll master grade school, skate through high school, survive college, and conquer the world. One forgotten password at a time.

PS For safety and security reasons, Nate has since changed his password. So don’t try any funny business, hackers.

That Motherf***ing School

“Lou! How was your day?” I called to the backseat as I accelerated onto Ward Parkway. 

“Great!” he said. He’s always enthusiastic after school. Actually I think he’s the only kid who ever really shared about his day at this age.

Well, that’s not totally true. Nate always shared some fabricated drama. Some feud in his class with a series of other boys that it sounded like he instigated. 

But Lou tells me who he played with, what they played, what they had for snack, who was mean, who made him laugh, and what they did on the playground.

Only that day, a very rainy day with periodic downpours, they didn’t go out on the playground.

“We had to go down to the bike room,” he reported. Which is the big open activity room in the basement that they use to get the wiggles out during the day. Especially on rainy days or snowy days. 

“…that motherfucking school.”

“Uh, what?”

I thought for sure I’d misunderstood him.

“That motherfucking school!”

I nearly swerved into the cars racing down Ward Parkway on either side of me.

“Lou!” But I didn’t even have a response.

Officially, my stance on toddler profanity is to ignore it, not to reward it with attention.

But that was with words like “crap” or “damn.”

Motherfucking was another level.

So I had to address it. Somehow.

“Uh, Lou,” I was fumbling, “that’s not really a nice word.”

He chuckled, seemingly pleased with himself, as he looked out the window. “I know.”

And we left it at that. But little did I know that the magnitude of Motherfucking may have been intentional. He was, as it turns out, done with that school.

The next morning Lou’s teacher and I were standing in the parking lot behind his school. In the rain. Not a downpour like the day before, just a steady, foggy mist. It was cold, but not too cold. It was a few minutes after 9am, and the gloomy weather was supposed to hold steady all day.

I wasn’t that concerned about the weather in that moment, I just wanted to move on with my day. I had a to-do list. Emails to return. Social media ads to craft. Errands to run. Bananas to buy.

The morning dropoff operation at Lou’s school takes place in front of the school.

But again, we were in the back of the school.

Out of the way. Out of sight. 

The morning had started off just fine. Lou’s almost always excited to get to school and see his teachers and friends. It’s his second year in that particular classroom, so he’s formed a tight bond with those two teachers. And he has two best girlfriends in that class who he talks about all the time. The pictures they send home to parents confirm this tight knit threesome—they’re together in almost every picture.

And he’s learned a lot this year. He comes home talking about the solar system and animal classifications. He’s wrong sometimes—flowers are not mammals—but still, the academic stimulation is there. Ivy league, here he comes.

And sure, every once in a while, he hesitates when a different teacher, not one of his two faves, comes to fetch him from the car at dropoff. A little stranger danger is a good thing. Self-preservation is key to survival in this pre-apocalyptic world. But usually, with a little coercion, he goes with that teacher.

So I was surprised that rainy Wednesday morning when an unfamiliar teacher opened the car door, greeted him by name, and he shrieked “no!” and retreated to the third row of seats. Out of reach. 

“Lou, come on!” I said, trying to coax him back up towards the front from my spot in the driver’s seat. “She’ll take you to your classroom!”

“No!” Tears were streaming down his face, which was red with anger. Or fear. I’m not sure which.

The well-meaning teacher took a glance at the cars backing up behind us and, defeated, put his backpack back on the floor of my car. I’m not calling her a quitter, I think she was just aiming for efficiency. 

“I’ll get one of his classroom teachers,” she said, shutting the door. 

“Ok,” I said. “I’ll pull up a little farther.” 

I pulled up the two car lengths ahead of me until I was positioned at the first orange cone as cars behind me steered around us.

After a minute or two of me trying to calm Lou’s tears, the preschool director came out, but as soon as she opened the door, his shrieking resumed. 

“Nooooo!”

“Hi,” I said, offering a warm smile so she didn’t penalize me with a tuition hike. “I don’t know what happened. He was in a great mood a minute ago.”

Since I’d already abandoned any shreds of self-respect—you know, around the time Nate was born and I first became a mom—I awkwardly climbed over the center console and to the backseat. Feeling around for the button to lower the seat, allowing greater access to the third row, I pressed it, fully exposing Lou, who had ducked down to hide. Though, really, his screams were pretty conclusive as to his location.

“That’s okay, maybe he’s just having a morning. I’ll get one of his teachers.”

She grabbed his bag, shut the door, and returned to the main entrance, where a constant stream of teachers was coming out, taking a small child by the hand and leading them into the building.

“Lou,” I called to him gently, though he was already losing it, so I don’t know why I was being so delicate. I guess I was just hopeful that he’d suddenly perk up, hop out of the car, and trot into the building.

“We’re kind of in the way here. The people behind us want to leave.”

“I want to go HOME!”

Yeah, I get it, I thought to myself. I want to go home, too. Just not with you. As usual with Lou and all my kids in this threenager phase, I felt so helpless. 

Suddenly, his teacher, one of his favorites, popped into view and I sighed with relief. Surely, he’ll go with her, he loves her, I thought. 

But, the third time is apparently not the charm because as soon as she opened the door, he screamed again, “No! I want to go home!”

“Lou, where’s your smile?” she asked sweetly.

I was going through my mental checklist of possible ailments. He’s not sick. He slept well. He ate a pretty good breakfast. He pooped. Hmm… was it just that initial unfamiliar teacher that set him off?

His teacher looked to me, desperate. And probably confused about his uncharacteristic rage.

I don’t know, my expression seemed to tell her. Or that’s what I was trying to say, anyway. 

I looked up at the swarm of teachers standing by the front door. They were all looking towards our car, waiting for us to move out of the way so they could fetch the next batch of kids. And all the parents, babysitters, and grandparents behind us were probably feeling the same frustration, the same eagerness to get on with their days. To get to the store, to get to work, to get to whatever they had planned that didn’t include preschoolers. 

We were inconvenient to say the least. 

“How about if I pull around back?” I suggested, grasping at straws.

“Yeah, that’s a good idea,” his teacher confirmed. In other words, get out of the way.

I didn’t even bother to have him put a seatbelt on as I pulled around to the back parking lot, alleviating the logjam of cars behind me, Lou still screaming from the third row. 

“Lou, let’s talk. What’s going on?”

“I just want to go home!”

“Why? We actually can’t go home right now. No one’s even there, except Barbara [our cleaning lady]. Tighe’s at the gym, the big kids are at school, and I have to go do some work.”

I would repeat essentially that same statement about ten more times in the next twenty minutes or so.

In a few moments, I looked up to see his other teacher who had come out to help. Her arms were outstretched and she wore a huge, optimistic smile. 

“Lou!” she called. 

Thank God, I thought. He loves her. 

But I was wrong again.

“I WANT TO GO HOME!”

I stepped out of the car to chat, to fill her in on his tantrum.

“He was in a great mood and then one of the other teachers came to help him out of the car  and he just lost it.”

“Hmm, okay,” she said, nodding. “Maybe we’ll make it a policy that only one of the two of us can get Lou from the car. The other teachers should just leave him be.”

“Well, maybe, but he should be able to adjust to other adults if needed.”

We talked a few more minutes and, since his sobs had not ceased or even lessened, she returned to the warmth of the indoors and I told her I’d text her when he’s ready. If nothing else, I had to get his backpack back since they’d already taken it from us.

Eventually, I was ready to bribe him.

“How about some Paw Patrol when you get home this afternoon? Or go to your favorite playground after school? Or maybe both?”

I’d promise Disney World at this point if it got him in the door of that building!

Not sure he knows what Disney is, though…

Fortunately, I didn’t need to introduce him to that overly commercialized hell hole because all of the sudden, he said “okay!,” wiped his tears from his cheeks, and hopped down from the car. 

“Great!” I said, texting his teacher that “he’s ready!”

But apparently he misunderstood me because as soon as she appeared on the sidewalk again, he restarted the screams and the sobs. 

Come on.

She went back inside and I promised her another text update in a few minutes. 

I can’t remember what we talked about, Lou and I, but somehow he calmed down and we walked towards the door and waited for his teacher to return.

“I don’t know why I was sad,” he said looking up at me in his vinyl yellow raincoat. 

“I don’t either,” I replied, squeezing his little hand. And I don’t know why, but that statement broke my heart. 

“You go in with your teacher and I’ll pick you up after lunch and after your nap. Like I always do.”

“Okay!” And as soon as the big green door opened, he ducked under her arm and darted into the building.

Less than twenty minutes later, I got a text from his teacher with a picture of a very smiley Lou. 

“He’s a happy guy,!” she had written.

I wasn’t worried, of course, but it was still nice to know that he had recovered. That he had resumed his natural state of “an enthusiasm unknown to mankind.” Which is the mantra Tighe recites to the kids every morning before school.

When I picked him up that afternoon, he was happy again. In a great mood. Ready to go to the playground. Or watch Paw Patrol until his siblings get home. And so his refusal to get out of the car and go to school that morning was just a mystery. 

“He’s just three,” his teacher concluded.

He sure is. 

I’m so grateful for his teachers’ patience and compassion that morning… at that motherfucking school.

Home Haircuts for the Boys*

*to the tune of “Let’s Hear it for the Boy” by Deniece Williams

If there’s one thing that everyone knows about me, it’s how much I love home haircuts.

I’m just kidding. I’ve never addressed home haircuts publicly. Or privately, for that matter. In fact, I’ve never even considered my feelings about home haircuts until typing these sentences right now.

But, for some reason, Tighe convinced Nate that I love them. Perhaps it’s just a ploy to save money at the barber shop, but a few weeks ago, when Nate mentioned that his hair was hanging in his eyes and over the tips of his ears, Tighe advised him to ask me for a haircut. 

For the record, no, I’ve no cosmetic or aesthetic or hairstyling training at all. I’m lucky if I brush my own hair every day. I usually just toss it up when I wash my face in the morning and leave it that way until I go to bed at night. 

But yeah, sure, what the heck? Give me some scissors and clippers, maybe a drink or two, and let me hack at your hair. 

As the haircut day approached, Lou, never one to be left out, also requested a haircut.

Sam, ever Sam, did not. 

Unless, of course, he “earned” a Lego set out of the event. 

“You’re not getting a Lego set just because you need a haircut,” we told him. Repeatedly.

Though, in fairness, the Lego-haircut exchange is a habit that we created years ago. When Nate and Sam were toddlers,Tighe took them to the barbershop, and if they were good, he took them to the toy store a few doors down. They loved it.

Nate’s pretty much grown out of that little transaction. Now he requests haircuts when he’s annoyed by constantly brushing his bangs out of his eyes. Or when he checks himself in the mirror and decides he needs a makeover. It’s very pre-adolescent. 

Sam, on the other hand, doesn’t give a $@#& about his appearance. Nor about the fact that the shaggy mane that hangs down over his shirt collar is technically a dress code violation at their Catholic school. Technically. 

So I was surprised on Sunday night, when I did, in fact, end up cutting his hair. All three boy’s haircuts were entirely different experiences. As are all three boys. Lou was the first. And probably yielded the worst results. 

I didn’t have a plan when he sat down, and that was my first mistake. I slid a guard on the clippers, barely paying attention to the number designation, and started running it across his head. 

What is this? I thought to myself. A fade? A buzzcut? 

I didn’t know. And because I was so distracted by his constant squirming and fidgeting, I didn’t really care. And I know he didn’t care. 

My second mistake was that I didn’t give him a screen. He gets plenty of screentime during the day, but perhaps some Paw Patrol or Outkast videos—his current favorite—would have kept him still. I doubt it, but maybe. 

Each glide across his scalp with the clippers caused him to jerk one way, then the other, bringing the blades a little too close to his delicate skin, even with the plastic guard. Lou jerked and jolted and quaked and tweaked and bounced like a meth head going through withdrawals. And when I finished with him, he looked like one.

And, in truth, I hadn’t really finished his haircut. I just didn’t want to risk screwing up his little head anymore. He had long strands that diverged disobediently from the top of his cowlick. His sideburns were uneven. I totally missed the soft, downy fuzz at the back of his neck. And worst of all, I had just drawn blood just behind his ear. 

So, although I was enjoying the conversation with Lou—mostly love proclamations for me, as usual—it was time to kick him out of my barber’s chair. 

Tighe directed him towards the shower so he could shampoo away all the itchy little fuzzies as Nate slid down in the chair in front of me. 

He was very specific with his haircut instructions: trim up around the ears, not too much off the front and top, even up the neckline in the back. 

I’d never felt so much pressure before. What if he looks ugly and girls don’t like him? Will his lax bro friends all shun him because of this haircut? Will he never have a girlfriend? What if I never have grandchildren? 

I handed him my phone so he could control the music while I nervously alternated between clippers and extremely dull (and cheap) scissors. I really need to study some YouTube videos about boys’ haircuts, I grumbled under my breath before asking him to check the mirror. Then I silently lamented about why I never invested in a sharp pair of shears, like my hairdresser friend always advises, followed by a mental pondering about whether the term “hairdresser” is the proper nomenclature. Hair stylist? Esthetician? Beauty school alum? 

“Uhh, there’s kind of a clump here that seems to be popping out,” he said, pointing to a very pronounced tumor-like bunch of hair just above his right ear. 

I sighed, silently debating whether that little bit of touch-up required the clippers or the really dull scissors. 

“Okay, we good?” I asked, peering at him in the mirror and twisting some of the locks between my fingers, measuring for evenness. 

He did the forehead hair flip thing that all the boys his age do, then tilted his head forward and shook it all out to dangle his bangs over his eyes again. 

“Yeah, good. Thanks, Mom.”

Not quite the emphatic declarations of undying love that I got from Lou, but I’ll take it. 

I swept the clumps of very fine, dirty blond hair into a pile and listened for Sam’s impossibly heavy footsteps on the wood floor. I knew he said he didn’t want a haircut, but he’s impulsive. Stubborn, but definitely impulsive. 

Sure enough, right after I slid the desk chair back into the bedroom, he poked his head around the corner. 

“Hi, Sam. Want a haircut?”

“How many Lego sets will you give me?”

“None,” Tighe called, overhearing from the other room. “We don’t care if you get a haircut or not. That’s your issue.”

“Yeah, but if it’s too long, I’ll get kicked out of school.”

“So?” Tighe scoffed. “There are plenty of schools we can transfer to.”

Having just completed the very tedious, very detailed application to Lou’s new preschool for next year, I got a tiny pain in my chest right as those words slipped out of Tighe’s mouth. If I have to fill out another application for another school, so help me, God.

Obviously, Tighe was bluffing, but since the new assistant principal at their school seems to favor strict discipline over creative expression and the well-being of the “whole child,” the thought of Sam getting kicked out of school has crossed my mind more than once. 

“Fine,” he said, dragging the chair back into the bathroom and having a seat. I stared greedily at the shagginess over his ears, but as soon as I started fiddling with the length in the back, he stopped me.

“No. I want a mullet.”

“Again?”

“Yes.” His resolve, as usual, was strong.

I blew out another long sigh and examined his head, tilting the top from one side to the other. I didn’t even know where to start, but the mullet of a thousand miles starts with a single chop. 

Business in the front, party in the back, I muttered to myself. For the next 10 minutes or so, that would be my mantra.

So I started with the ears, trimming the inch or so that had grown over to cover the tops of each one. 

Then, onto the front. How do I achieve a sense of aesthetic “business?” Where is the line between the party and the business?

I started with the bangs and began to work my way back. Maybe it’ll just work itself out—the transition between the board meeting and keg party will just happen as I cut. 

I’ll spare you my mental anguish. My uncertainty. My lack of confidence. Questioning every life decision I’d ever made until that point. Where I went to college. The extracurriculars I chose. Moving to Denver. Then back to Baltimore. Marrying Tighe. Accepting new jobs. Pursuing my master’s. Leaving said jobs. Opting for children. Moving to Kansas City. 

All of those decisions had led me to this point, this very moment. I’d survived, persevered, for a reason. And that reason was this mullet. 

For those wondering, I discovered that the mullet starts and ends at the crown of the head and ends somewhere mid-neck. Any longer than that and you’re looking at a rat tail.  A good cowlick up on top adds character, but from there, the mullet really develops personality all on its own. 

As of this writing, Sam has yet to be kicked out of school for his unruly hair. Now that the weather is warming up, the administration has bigger fish to fry: skirt lengths in the middle school. What a noble, high-minded crusade. Similar to my campaign for the most exemplary home haircut—my favorite activity.

The Norovirus That Wasn’t… Or Was It?

Ugh, I don’t know where he gets this energy, I thought to myself, watching Lou sprint through the hallways of a nearby public high school. I say “sprint,” but I actually don’t know that that’s the best word to describe whatever it was he was doing. It was like high knees meets lateral slides meets some sort of dinosaur march that he does at circle time at school.

But he was doing it at full speed. And snarling while doing so.

It was a Sunday evening and we were at one of Nate’s club basketball tournaments for a 6pm game. Sam had his final basketball game of the season a few hours before, at 3pm, so instead of going home, we scooted over to a pizza place that was halfway between the two schools for an early dinner. 

In fact, we were literally the only people there. We had no fewer than four waitresses and one bartender tending to us, practically a one to one ratio. We ordered two medium pizzas and Tighe and I each had a salad. It’s important to note that my salad had chicken and Tighe’s did not. 

We arrived at Nate’s game early, but since it’s a huge school with several gyms, there were lots of other basketball games happening to help us kill the time. 

One girl’s game in particular was getting heated. It was standing room only in there, so we stood in the doorway at the edge of the court, Tighe and I both getting sucked into the drama, musing at a handful of parents, all people we didn’t know, lose their cool. 

Over a sixth grade girl’s game. 

Tess and Nate were also entranced. Nate loved the intensity. As the time ticked down, each whistle blow was a make-or-break moment for both teams. 

[Little aside from my soapbox: this is why I think basketball is such a great sport! You get the team aspect—cohesiveness, working together, being a part of something big, sharing accountability and accolades. But you also get the individual piece—the mental toughness it takes to stand at the free throw line and have the pressure of a W or L all on your shoulders. So many life lessons learned in sports. Sign your kids up TODAY! Sam’s rebuttal to be published at a later date.]

Anyway, back to the game.

Tess was entranced for a different reason. I think she’s genuinely in awe of girls who play sports. Somehow, despite literally spending her whole life on lacrosse fields, soccer fields, basketball courts and more, she’s still confused about why anyone would choose to participate in such an enterprise. Especially girls. So she’s taking it all in, noting their hairstyles, the way they wear their uniforms, how they interact with each other. 

I really don’t know if she’ll ever be an athlete—though she definitely has potential—but she definitely pays more attention to the girls’ games than the boys’. Even her own brothers. Actually, especially her own brothers. 

But where were Sam and Lou? I wondered, suddenly snapping back to the moment.

As soon as I said that, my ankle nearly gave out from under me as Lou tackled Sam right between my legs and began pummeling him with punches. He had Sam pinned to the hardwood floors of the gym and the blond strands on the top of his head were practically touching the sideline.

“Oooh, he strong!” the man standing next to me said, switching his focus from the very tight basketball game to the very tight wrestling match at our feet. 

Despite their sixish year age gap, Lou overpowers Sam every time. Partly because Sam doesn’t want to fight back and hurt Lou, but also because Lou really is strong. 

Sam survives on takis, hot sauce, and apple slices while Lou drinks protein shakes and eats anything we put on his plate. His favorite dinner? Ribs. He requests them every night. Sam’s arms and legs look like drinking straws and Lou’s are like muscular tree trunks. 

Writhing around on the ground together, their entwined limbs took out my leg again, at which point I was fed up. I dragged them just a few feet from the gym out to the hallway. I didn’t need parent spectators who were already fired up and dropping profanity turning their grievances on Sam and Lou.

A bench lined one wall of the very wide hallway, which was great because the gray Adidas leggings I was wearing were starting to bother me. They’re high-waisted and kind of tight, so I rarely wear them, and as I rested on the bench, I was starting to remember why.

I groaned in gastro-intestinal discomfort as Sam and Lou continued wrestling along the wall of lockers across from me. I could feel my bloated stomach start to put pressure on my linea alba, which in turn, puts pressure on my lower back. Thanks, six pregnancies.*

So sitting down, releasing the pressure on my torso, was a nice treat. 

As Nate’s game got ready to start, I kept the kids in the hallway. The gym was pretty tight, and there wasn’t a lot of spectator seating. Let them wrestle and do these weird, jurassic agilities out in this larger space, away from people.

I was also still uncomfortable. I couldn’t decide whether I was gassy and bloated from my oddly timed dinner of pizza and salad or my leggings were just constricting my stomach. 

And was I nauseous? I couldn’t tell, but the uncertainty and distress was enough to dampen my mood. Usually I love watching my kids play sports, not just because it makes me proud, but also because it’s usually fun to hang with other parents in the stands. 

But tonight, I just wasn’t feeling it. The thought of forced banter and gregariousness seemed exhausting to me. I wanted to get out of my leggings and onto the couch. Perhaps even into bed. It’s my favorite place. 

Stalling to go in cost me one thing: a seat in the stands. 

Which was good and bad. Bad because I yearned to sit. But good because of my darkening, suddenly antisocial mood.

And my mood was about to get darker because of Sam and Lou.

Those two.

Since there were no seats, Tighe and another dad stood along the baseline, just a few yards from the basket, and I squatted in the corner. Have you ever done a “yoga for digestion” routine, where it’s just a series of squats and twists in an attempt to squeeze air out of your intestines? That’s how I’d describe my posture for the first half of the game.

And only the first half because I left at halftime. 

Tess spent the first half sauntering in and out of the gym, rolling her eyes at the game itself each time she returned, as if to say “Ugh, I can’t believe this is why we’re here.” In retrospect, I have no idea what she was doing, but she probably took five or six trips in those 20ish minutes of play. 

Lou and Sam, on the other hand, found some metal folding chairs in the corner and dragged them out to sit on. And by “sit,” I mean “use as props.”

In fact, they alternated between sitting upright, as one is intended to do on a chair, crawling under the chair, crawling under the other person’s chair, climbing on top of the other person seated in their chair, and more. 

At one point, I glanced over and Lou was seated correctly with his hands folded in his lap, his eyes fully focused on the game. Nate’s game. He loves to cheer for Nate and his friends. 

Lou’s engagement gives me a sudden sense of ease, not necessarily for my stomach and GI issues, but at least I didn’t feel like we were in the way and annoying other spectators. Which is how I usually feel.

But then I looked at Sam, who had somehow contorted himself to “sit” inverted on the chair. His knees were bent over the back of it, his back pressed along the seat, and his head dangling off, all of his fine blond hairs pointed towards the ground. 

How the heck does he function in school, you may be asking yourself. 

Peering into his very large nostril, which was uncomfortably close to my face, I wondered the exact same thing. But pretty well, apparently. We’ve never had a single behavioral issue with him and his standardized test scores—though admittedly a relatively useless metric—are pretty stinkin’ good.

All indicators point to a thriving third-grade student that excels for seven hours a day, five days a week. 

So why can he not sit through an hour-long basketball game? And really, it’s only two twenty-minute halves in most of these tournaments. 

As the whistle blew, I shifted my focus from his nostril back to the game. The other team was really good, and though the score was close, Nate’s team was not playing well. The basketball fervor helped distract me from Sam’s and Lou’s derangement and my own tummy issues.

Until a moment or two later when I heard the unmistakable sound of metal on wood and I looked up to see Sam and Lou dragging their chairs across the gym floor and towards the exit.

A flashback of WWF “chair matches” suddenly triggered my propensity for parental micromanagement, which is normally nonexistent.

“I’m out of here! Taking them with me!” I called to Tighe, pulling the chairs from the boys’ grips and thanking God that we took two cars.

Tess was just returning from one of her jaunts into the hallway when I grabbed her sleeve. 

“Come on, we’re leaving. Get your coat.”

I didn’t need to tell her twice. Stay in a hot, stuffy gym to watch her brother play a sport she didn’t like? Or retreat home, where she could have ice cream, crawl into her pajamas, and start a movie? 

She was on my heels, down the long hallway, in no time.

The next few hours were a blur, but I can tell you what I remember.

We drove home. It was already dark. My nausea was very real, not imagined. But I distracted myself by whimsically, almost impulsively, changing radio stations and answering Sam’s non-stop questions about the legality of various actions. I don’t know whether to worry about that conversation or not, but since it was mostly about what entails a criminal action for a cop, I think we can shelve the worry for a later date.

When we arrived home, I promised ice cream to anyone who got into pj’s and joined me on the couch, which was the only place I wanted to be. 

I don’t remember what we watched, but I do remember that the kids’ dessert was making me nauseous—a major red flag for me since I have a pretty strong sweet tooth—and Lou was rubbing my back and asking if I was okay. His ability to empathize (or maybe sympathize?) far exceeds everyone else’s in that house.

There was vomiting. A lot of it. Other stuff, too, out the other end. You know what I mean. As one of my mom friends puts it, “a touch of D.” Except it was more than a touch.

When Tighe got home, he put everyone to bed and finished the laundry that I was too sick to deal with. I thanked God that he hadn’t left me yet. On a normal day, I take my happy marriage for granted, but in moments of sickness, when parenting from the bathroom floor in front of the toilet would be nearly impossible, I’m really grateful to have him.

I showered, got into bed, and slept a restless sleep. I never developed a fever and though I never threw up again, the nausea woke me several times during the night. I just felt sick and unsettled. 

By morning, I felt pretty good. Tired and weak, but no longer sick.

And everyone else?

I guess it’s still too early to say with confidence, but no one else has gotten sick yet. It’s been a solid four days. Which makes me wonder: was it the notorious norovirus that’s been circulating KC and the rest of the country? Or was it food poisoning from the chicken on my salad at the pizza place? Or some third option? Did Sam roofie me and that’s why he wanted insight into the criminal justice system?

A day or two later, Tighe told me he wasn’t “confident in his stomach,” so I stayed home from bunko so he wouldn’t have to take care of kids while sick. But other than that, we’ve had a pretty healthy, norovirus-free week. 

Knocking on all kinds of wood right now and praying to all the Gods and gods I can think of!

*I count my two miscarriages when I’m measuring the “damage” pregnancy has done to my body. Mostly because I gained a full first-trimester’s worth of weight with the second one, and I was exceedingly nauseous for 11 straight weeks.

Happy 11th Birthday, Nate!

Happy 11th Birthday, Nate.

Are you kidding me, Nate? Are you actually 11?

And yes, I can write this directly to him because he’s literate. And he actually checks The Urinal every now and then.

He’s at that age anyway. When I wonder whether or not I should still be writing about him at all. But it’s his birthday, so I have to.

And the truth is that 11 is turning into the optimal age. We’re well past tantrums and meltdowns, but we don’t have any of the teenage drama and angst just yet. Though we know we’re close, so Tighe and I have made a point to savor these moments. 

Nate’s always been an easy kid. Headstrong and opinionated and chatty, yes, definitely.

But generally good-natured and helpful.

He makes friends pretty easily, anywhere he goes. If I ask him to complete a chore, he does it without question. He grumbles about homework and tedious tasks, but he possesses an ability to empathize and reason that, I think, far surpasses most 11 year-olds.

He’s pretty self-aware when it comes to creating boundaries for himself. He recognizes when certain friends and siblings are overwhelming him and he needs a break. He retreats to his room with music and Legos or to a spot on the couch with a book. He loves to read, and even though he’s mostly hanging with a group of boys who are emerging as future jocks and frat boys, he still owns his nerdiness. 

He cherishes his sleep, so he turns down sleepovers quite a bit. But I hope this is something that continues through his teenage years: that when he needs a break, when his friends are doing something they shouldn’t or that he’s not interested in, he’ll have no trouble saying no.

I hope. 

As he’s matured, he’s started to prioritize the good of the group—the team, the class, the family—ahead of his own desires. Which is sometimes a very good quality, as long as he’s still able to express himself, pursue his own goals, voice his own opinions, and meet his needs. 

When he knows I’m in a bad mood or Tighe has a lot of work to do and phone calls to make, he turns himself into the bad cop of the household and tries to keep the other kids quiet. It doesn’t matter that in doing so, he actually creates more noise and conflict—it’s the thought that counts.

I think that compatibility, that inclination towards flexibility and cooperation, is often a trait of oldest children. It was (and is) true of me, anyway. We’re sensitive to others, we see what needs to be done and what’s at stake, and we get it done. Or at least help facilitate it. 

I know he’s aware of our finances, of me and my moods, of what’s expected of him as he goes into the world and represents our family. But I don’t want those anxieties to weigh on him and hold him back. He’s a team player and a hype man, which is awesome!, but I want him to pursue his own dreams without worrying about us. Or about taking care of his siblings.

You do you, Nate. We’ll fully support you.

At the moment, Tighe and I both pour a lot of time and energy and money into his sports. We pay for new uniforms and equipment and registration fees. We, mostly Tighe, drive carpools and sit and watch games and practices. And Tighe even coaches some of his sports. 

We’re so proud of the effort and focus and dedication he puts in. And he knows how much Tighe and I truly love sports and love watching him play. It’s fun to see how he’s developed as an underdog in all of his sports, how he’s benefited from quality coaching and made adjustments to his game and technique. Especially basketball and lacrosse. Oh, but also football. And rugby. And to a lesser degree, soccer. 

But as he ages, the programs intensify and the pressures mount. And if he can handle it all and he really loves the commitment and the competition and the opportunities, great. But if not, if the stress and the demands get to be too much, it’s okay. Our love and pride and acceptance of him isn’t conditional on his athletics. 

We love him because he’s our son. He makes us proud in everything he does. And how hard he works. And what a good friend he is. And a good big brother—thoughtful, considerate, compassionate. With a great sense of humor and a really great, boisterous laugh. No pressure. 

We love spending time with him and seeing what he pursues, how he grows and matures each day. 

Well done, Nate.

Happy 6th Birthday, Tess!

“Is Tess turning 7 this year?”

It was a text from my brother. 

But nope, she’s only six. Though it does feel like she’s been around forever, doesn’t it? 

Not only because she’s spent her whole life getting dragged around in carpools, to basketball games, soccer games, lacrosse games, football games, rugby games, birthday parties, karate classes, playdates, swim lessons, camps and clinics, and tournaments, and all the other places we go.

But also because she’s kind of an old soul. She’s spent five years—six now—staring at faces, studying people, learning, observing, judging. 

If you haven’t been on the receiving end of one of her death stares, then you haven’t spent enough time around her. 

More than one person has compared her to Wednesday Addams. A very blond Wednesday Addams.

Ask her any question, any question at all, and you won’t get an immediate response. She’ll think about it first. I don’t know what she’s thinking about because sometimes the questions are simple yes-or-no’s, like “do you want milk?” “do you have to pee before we leave?” “did you brush your teeth?” “did you get a new library book today?”

She gives you a skeptical, ‘why do you want to know’ look, gazing at you with no smile, no expression at all actually, while she assesses your motives for asking. And then I imagine she weighs the answer carefully in her head, checking off all potential replies and what information would be revealed with each one.

She lives her whole life on a need to know basis, and most people don’t need to know. Snitches get stitches and such.

At one of Nate’s basketball games recently, another dad asked me if Tess was mad at him. And he was serious. 

“I don’t even think she knows who you are,” I thought to myself. But I guess she had given him her infamous Tess glare, and he internalized it for some reason. A grown man. 

I assured him that no, she was not in fact mad at him. If she was mad at anyone, which I don’t think she was, it was at Tighe for failing to give her a dollar for the concession stand before he was called over to help at the scorer’s table. Heaven forbid she suffer through 24-minutes of basketball, plus clock stoppage and halftime, without a ring pop.

But her stoicism, her chill demeanor, her seeming dispassionate deadpan, does not necessarily reflect her mood or her friendliness. 

At school pick-up recently, I sat in my car listening to a podcast and periodically glancing in the side view mirror to watch for the kindergartners—Tess’s class is always the first one to the parking lot. I don’t know if that’s a matter of dismissal procedure or if it’s just the natural inclination of kindergarten teachers to end the day as soon as possible. Those poor, ragged souls must be desperate to get out by 3:30. I know the kids are. 

Either way, Tess always reaches my car first. 

I watched the line of kindergartners reach the parking lot, each one breaking free as they spotted their grown-up’s car. They jump up to high-five the teacher and then tear towards their parents at top speed. One overly gregarious little boy, a chatty little fellow who talks with loads of passion and energy and hand gestures, sprinted to his mom’s car, already yelling updates about his day to her from about thirty yards out.

Tess, meanwhile, parted from her teacher with a simple, poker faced head nod. She stalked across the parking lot, head slightly down, her eyes cast firmly to her right, as though she was casting a spell on one of the parents eagerly awaiting their children. As she approached the car, her eyes met mine in the side view mirror and I braced myself for what could only be a gloomy, perhaps irritated, mood.

“How was your day?” I asked as she pulled open the door behind me. 

“Good,” she said. 

I was surprised to hear a note of cheer in her voice. She shared a few details about her day, about who went home sick, the pictures she colored at rest time, that her class was rewarded because everyone remembered their library books. 

Soon Sam arrived and her report was drowned out by his daily bickering with our 7th grade neighbor we carpool with. When Nate, always the last to the car, arrived, he immediately launched into whatever drama ignited his fire that day—who won the football game at recess, demerit injustices, his academic progress (or lack thereof), or his plans for after school.

So her lack of sharing has been conditioned by a lack of opportunity. 

But, please, don’t feel sorry for her. She gets plenty of attention at home and is plenty spoiled. And she doesn’t want your sympathy anyway. 

She’s too busy. 

Our most self-sufficient child by far, Tess has been voted “Most Enjoyable to Have Home Sick.” By both parents.

Even if she’s actually faking sick. Which she’s admitted to doing. 

Tighe and I can pretty much go about our day as planned—Tighe working on… plumbing parts, I guess, and me tapping away on my laptop—certain that Tess will fend for herself. 

She’ll fetch her own snacks. She’ll prepare her own lunch. She can plan and carry out her own activities. From puzzles to coloring to painting to jewelry-making to reading practice, she’s got it covered. 

And though I’ll admit that clean-up is still a developing skill, I have hope. Her teacher reports that, at school, Tess is usually a step or two ahead of the rest. Not that she’s particularly fast or academically superior, but she’s already seen what needs to be done and taken care of it.

She’s cleaned up her desk. She’s put away her materials. She’s washed her hands. She’s ready and waiting for whatever bullshit a formal kindergarten curriculum is going to throw at her next. 

And one of my favorite Tess qualities is that she’s an amazing big sister. I’m not wishing we’d had more kids after Lou or anything crazy like that, but Tess does a really good job of taking care of him, keeping him safe, fed, and entertained. She plays Paw Patrol, she shares snacks and markers and Legos, she teaches him how to play games or get dressed, she queues up a show for him, she does it all.

So yes, Tess is only six this year. But in so many ways, she’s older than all of us.