In Need of a Bigger Table

Faithful readers of this blog—is there any such thing?—will recall that a few weeks ago I wrote about our really, insanely busy fall Saturday schedule. Multiple soccer games, multiple flag football games, a lacrosse tournament, and Tighe’s playoff tackle football game (he’s coaching, not playing). 

Several of those events had overlapping if not simultaneous start times, requiring us to be two places at once, sometimes 30 minutes away. Phew, they were exhausting.

Well, it turns out the comedown from those adrenaline highs was pretty rough!

And instead of taking out our aggression on the opposing team or coach or I-435 traffic, we began taking it out on each other. 

Yes, fall sports have ended and winter basketball—for Nate and Sam, anyway—is just beginning. Tess declined winter sports and Lou would absolutely play if there was a league for really aggressive 26 month-olds who are also obsessed with their moms. No such league exists. I checked. 

Tighe is coaching Nate’s team and only helping with Sam’s team, so he’ll be around more than he was in September and October. And we seem to have a weird interlude in his work travel schedule, so he’s around all day, too. 

Yes, lots of together time. No more—or at least not as much—rushing through homework and snack before we have to leave for practice, followed by another practice. Then home for a quick, non-nutritious dinner, frantic baths and showers, before we speed through prayers, teeth-brushing, and other bedtime rituals and wonder why they have trouble falling asleep. 

Instead, we’ve had a week or so of much more leisurely afternoons and evenings. Hours and hours to do their very minimal homework. Loads of time to play games and do puzzles and read books.

Which also means…

…hours and hours and hours of time to eat junk food, sneak Halloween candy, fight about things that don’t matter, break lamps, and scatter belongings, toys, and cups throughout the house. 

It’s really fun and just thinking about it warms my heart. 

And yes, I’m being sarcastic.

Yesterday after school, Nate changed into his play clothes and biked to a friend’s house to play touch football. So he was marked safe. 

Meanwhile, Sam, our resident nerd, aka Crazy Old Maurice, resumed construction on a robot. According to the directions in the box, you can deconstruct and reconstruct the robot into different formations that allow it to climb walls, transport items, and do other really cool things that Sam was pretty fired up about. 

He also had his homework—a math worksheet that he hadn’t so much as written his name on—out on the table, along with computer coding game that he got for Christmas a few years ago. It resembles Plinko from The Price is Right, but it’s designed to teach kids to problem-solve and create computer programming. I don’t really know how it works, but I do know that it’d be cooler if it didn’t involve so many small parts that end up on the floor, particularly the teeny tiny marbles that roll every direction at once. 

Oh! And he had out a Eyewitness encyclopedia book on ancient mythology that he had checked out from the school library that day. It sat open and he periodically, turned the pages and pointed out creepy looking statues and funky hieroglyphics. 

He might have ADHD.

On that same table, the table where we eat our family dinners, Tess was coloring in her giant Lisa Frank coloring pad with about 40 to 50 Crayola markers. 

And at the far window, Lou had a pile of dry-erase markers and was scribbling on the glass. Of course, they wipe right off and I allow him to do this, but still, the messiness of the activity gives me anxiety.

For about an hour, this arrangement more or less worked. I rotated between the three major players, coloring with Tess, fetching a snack for Lou, and taking apart the tiny robot pieces that Sam’s fingers just couldn’t manage. 

Naturally, there were a few hiccups. Lou, stuffing his face with crackers, almost choked, spraying crumbs everywhere and attracting the attention of the dogs. Tess and Sam fought over valuable real estate on the table, each pushing their belongings across the imaginary midline of the table. And Tess grew angry when Lou began using her markers as projectile weapons. 

But otherwise, it worked. 

Until it didn’t. 

As darkness began to fall, Tighe decided to walk a few blocks to fetch Nate. My tasks in the kitchen grew increasingly frantic as the dinner hour approached, and unbeknownst to them, the three kids in the dining room began to get hangry. They were more and more irritable by the minute. And so was I. 

Tighe was gone for a total of 15 minutes. He stopped to chat with a neighbor and watch Nate’s pickup game for a few minutes.

When he came into the kitchen, which felt like hours later, I shook Lou off my leg and shoved him in Tighe’s direction. 

“In the short time you’ve been gone, at least three of the four of us have cried,” I yelled to him over Tess’s woeful, high-pitched shrieks. If I remember right, she was angry about the type of cheese I was using to make her quesadilla. 

Sam, who hadn’t eaten since lunch six and a half hours ago, was both losing patience with the small, finicky plastic pieces of his robot and getting confused by the next “challenge” on his coding game. 

And Lou was just flat-out hungry. I had tossed a granola bar his way about fifteen minutes ago, but it hadn’t satiated him. Plus his socks were “heavy.” Whatever that means. But it was very distressing to him. He was wailing and hanging on my legs as I was trying to make my way between the three points of the kitchen triangle: sink, fridge, stove. 

“These people,” I muttered to Tighe, shaking my head and blowing out a stream of air through my lips.

A few minutes later, we were sitting at the table. The same table that was previously covered in games and books and homework and markers and tears. Now it had cups of milk and salad and enchiladas and apple slices and laughter. 

A return to quiet, docile evenings when we have nothing to do but fight, problem-solve, cry, and giggle is a good thing. We just need a bigger table.