Cindy the guinea pig and I don't stand a chance

Last night our entire family was hanging out in the super six year old's room, getting ready for bed. The tiny toddler was all bundled up in his fuzzy footie pajamas and sitting on my lap. I was attempting to read a book to him that his daycare teacher had allowed him to bring home. Actually, I'm not so sure he wanted to bring it home. I am thinking that maybe his teacher wanted  him to bring it home because it is all about learning patience and appropriate ways to gain attention. It's a great book and I wanted my tiny toddler to really listen and take to heart the theme. He, on the other hand, however, wanted to giggle at the pictures in the book and blow raspberries at my face. Spitting on Mommy is one of his favorite past times.

While I was dodging spit from the tiny toddler the super six year old was engaged in a rousing game of catch with Daddy. While I was trying to calm down the tiny toddler and wind down his more than difficult day Daddy was sitting on the bed tossing a football across the room at my oldest son. Who, to his credit, was catching it most of the time. At one point, though, Daddy lobbed the football a little too high and we all watched in horror as it flew through the air, bounced off the fish bowl, and landed on the dresser. Every single human in the room gave their usual response: the tiny toddler clapped and cheered, and then started giggling so hard that he had to cover his mouth. The super six year old looked as though he was about to burst into tears, thinking he was going to get in trouble. My sweet husband looked surprised and then started laughing as well. And me? I wanted to throw everyone out of the room. I wanted to say, "I told you not to throw that football in this room!" Instead I said, "OK, put the football away, NOW!" And then it hit me. A thought, not the football.

My husband. Two sons. The cat. The fish. ALL MALE. Cindy the guinea pig and I are the only females in this household. We don't stand a chance.

The toilet seat will always be up.

Pull Ups or underwear will always be on the floor.

Table manners will include burping and tossing rolls.

Wet towels will always be on the bed or bathroom floor.

Footballs, bouncy balls, plastic balls, soccer balls, every type of ball ever invented, will frequently be flying through the air inside my home.

I will sit through a million football games, whether from the sofa while watching the game on TV, in real life from a professional team's stadium, or on the sidelines of a youth league. Actually, I am OK with this, as I like football. But still, it's a fact. And let's face it, many of those games will not be played during blue sky, sunny, warm days.

Everything will move at the speed of light. My boys are incapable of walking. They must run everywhere or they will die.

On top of moving fast, it will be loud. As in rock concert loud.

Pirates, rock collections, dogs, mud.

And I love it, I really do. Of course I do. These are my boys, all three of them. I love what they love. I am at peace when they are happy. But in the middle of the yelling and running and cleaning mud off of everything I need to be sure that while allowing them to be the boys they are we don't lose sight of teaching them what they need to become the men we want them to be. Men who believe in God. Men who lead their hearts instead of allowing their hearts to lead them. Men who hold doors open and say "please" and "thank you". Men who know the importance of spending time with family and who want to be a part of a "tribe", whether that means family or friends. Men who won't drive their significant others crazy. And prior to that, men who won't drive me crazy as we grow through this process.

As my boys grow up it will be easier for me to find the time to sneak away for "girl time". I am already able to let them play in the child watch while I work out, which is a start. My husband watches chick flicks because he knows I like them, which is awesome. But I am quickly learning that I am not able to function when life gets too loud or too crazy. It is at these moments that I need to step back, take a deep breath, and learn to enjoy the footballs flying through the air. Raising boys takes me out of my comfort zone sometimes. But other times, I can fit right in. This morning I chose to wing my husband's vitamins at him from across the kitchen table. Sadly, my aim is not as good as my boys' and I managed to toss the fruit shaped gummy vitamins right into his glass of water. Cheers erupted all around the table. Oh yeah, I can keep up!

no cats, or tiny toddlers, were harmed in the writing of this essay

When I was in college I lived in a two unit house just up the street from the center of town. For a long time it seemed to be a music majors house, as renter after renter all passed through the halls of the Hugh A. Glauser School of Music. I lived there for a few years, with a very interesting room mate and her thought he was interesting but really wasn't interesting at all boyfriend. And a very large, very loud bird. A bird that needed to go to bed every night by 9:00pm, which meant that no one could enter the living room. Not even if you paid rent. Which the bird did not. What on earth did that bird need so much sleep for anyways? Big final the next day? Tough commute to the office? Why?

Also living with us in this house were a few loving cats and a huge fish tank made of hand blown glass, (not always the best idea, as the glass occasionally broke and we had first row seats to the circle of life.) But the cats, they were cool.

One of these cats was truly not bright. Dim. Very very dim. But he loved to be outside, so my room mate would sometimes put him on a leash and let him hang out with us on the front porch. Until the day he fell off the porch rail, while the leash was attached to the front door. I'll give you a minute to get the mental picture. Basically, a cat, on a string, hanging off the side of the porch, feet not touching the ground. Thank God we were there to rescue him.

Fast forward twenty years a handful of years to this afternoon. My mother in law recently gave my tiny toddler a hand made blanket that my husband used as a baby. Doing the math we know that this blanket is at least 40 years old. I was terrified that it would just fall apart when I washed it before giving it to my son, but it held up like a trooper. So I gave it to my little guy, and he loves it. He knows it was Daddy's blanket and I think that is why he loves it so.  He carries it all around the house. I know, right? Everyone say it together, awwwwww. So this blanket is  slightly larger than your normal baby blanket, which means it drags behind him like a bridal train. Which is normally not a problem until his oh so loving big brother steps on it, causing the little guy to stop in his tracks and snap backwards. The yarn this thing is made from has a lot of give to it.

I don't think that my tiny toddler had ever encountered a set of stairs until we brought him to our hotel in Russia. Thanks to the daily rain we had the horror  pleasure of investigating every inch of the hotel, including the stairs. My little man spent hours crawling up to the top and then sliding down, on his belly, feet first. Once home he taught my big four and a half year old how to do this little stunt and it caught on. Even though he is tall enough now to actually walk up and down the stairs he still slides down at top speed. He goes so fast that one day I actually saw him hit the bottom step and fly into the front door. He rolled over onto his back, put him hand to his head, and giggled.

This is a lot of back story just to tell you this: today after his nap my tiny toddler grabbed his over sized knit green and white blanket and headed down the hall to the steps. As he rounded the corner to begin his death defying slide down the stairs his blanket trailed behind him. And then it got caught on the door stopper on the hallway side of the ledge at the top of the stairs. He didn't know this, however, so he began his slide and got halfway down before the slack in the blanket caught up with him. He stopped dead in his tracks, literally dangling on the stairs, hanging on to the blanket. The look on his face was priceless. Total confusion.

He refused to let go of the blanket so by the time I freed him he had rolled around on the steps to the point of capture. He looked like a crab in net. And you would think he would be maybe just a little bit scared, but not this tough little guy. When he was finally free he bent down, scooped up the offending blanket, and shook his tiny finger at it while loudly yelling "no, no blanket!"

So history does repeat itself. A blanket doing it's second tour of baby duty created the same scene as a leash some twenty years later, only now there was a baby hanging off the end, instead of a cat.

football, fish, and fun

The Wilkison's had a great weekend! We took Matthew apple picking, something he has looked forward to since we went last year. Last year before we visited the orchard Matthew rarely ate apples, except for applesauce. He simply would not try a fresh one. He did, however, enjoy practicing picking the apples off the tree- even as a two year old he had a great imagination. Last year he grabbed an apple and sat right now on the grass to eat it. Ever since then he has been perfecting his love of all things apple. He has been bouncing around the house for weeks, unable to contain his enthusiasm for his upcoming apple picking trip. This year he was a tad more scientific about his fruit. He helped me put the bag in the large handled basket we brought and he carefully selected which grove of trees to head towards. He took his time choosing which apples would make it into his basket. And he found exactly the right one to eat right then.

We picked out the perfect pumpkin and headed to lunch. We went to City BBQ and did our normal routine - Matthew and Brad sat down and I went up to order. There was no line so I wasn't gone that long but by the time I found my way back to my boys the two of them had taken nearly every item out of the old diaper bag back pack that we  now use for sippy cups and extra underwear. The table was full of match box cars, monster trucks, wipes, sunscreen, and a very old and long forgotten bag of apple dippers from McDonald's. Yuck. They had also found a small tin of peanut butter cups that Brad's mother gave him last time we were in Cleveland and so were already eating dessert. sigh...

After lunch we walked around Easton and hit up the book store. We were looking for a foreign language book but instead came away with two books for Matthew. Typical, right? The good news is that the long walk around the outdoor mall helped push me towards my goal of 8,000 steps. What an awesome excuse to head to Easton!

Saturday night brad built a cozy fire in the backyard fire pit and the three of us played football. Our little guy is quickly becoming a fast runner! At one point in the game Brad threw the ball to me while Matthew was heading towards me at top speed, head down, ready to take me out. I threw the ball back to Brad to avoid being knocked down by my three year old. Imagine my surprise when on Sunday I saw the Cleveland Browns execute nearly the exact same play!

Sadly, when Brad left the backyard to take Matthew up to bed I somehow managed to kill his beautiful fire. Little did I know how he would retaliate...

Yesterday we visited Mom, who didn't seem to remember that earlier in the week she hung up on me in her anger over my cancelling her dentist appointment to "fit my schedule". I didn't cancel any appointments. I tried to explain to her that I did not know why she had the appointment on her calendar, but she slammed the phone down before I got the chance. Yesterday she was in a great mood, happily listening to her grandson share his apple picking story. She then asked why we hadn't brought her any apples. I have not one memory of that woman eating an apple. the whole process of Alzheimer's Disease is amazing to me. My mother used to hate coffee, most fruits, especially berries, and Chinese food. In the past year I have seen her eat all of those things. When I asked her about these changes in her tastes she insists that she has always eaten them. Kind of makes me think I am the one with the memory issues...

Despite spending hours making a Thanksgiving-like meal and watching an amazing football game, the highlight of Sunday came when Brad accidentally poured Matthew's fish, Stuart, down the drain. My boys headed up to the bathtub while I cleaned up the kitchen. Here is what I hear: laughter and water splashing, then Brad's slightly panicked voice asking me if I can come upstairs, right now. By the time I hit the top of the stairs he is asking for tweezers. I am picturing a huge splinter in Matthew's hand or something even worse, when Brad tells me that Stuart is in the drain. Oh. My. God.

By the time I find the tweezers and race to the bathroom Matthew is out of the tub, covered in soapy bubbles, trying to climb up to the sink to see what Daddy is doing with his fish. Long story short- Daddy worked on that sink for quite some time but in the end we found ourselves explaining that Stuart was most likely heading towards the ocean. Like Nemo. Of course, Matthew was appropriately saddened at the loss of his fishy friend, until he decided that he will name his next fish "Peeps". And no, I do not know why.

When I think about my weekend the pictures that jump into my head are my smiling little guy jumping up and down picking apples and running back to drop them, one by one, in the basket. I see the table at lunch covered with the entire contents of the backpack. I see the look on my son's face as he races towards me with determination in his eyes during our backyard football game. I see the look on my husband's face when he walks back onto the patio and sees that his once blazing fire has cooled to softly glowing embers. And I will always remember my husband and I sitting on the sofa after tucking Matthew into bed, trying not to laugh at the thought of poor little Stuart slipping down the drain. They say these are the moments we will always remember!