Birth Control

(Todays’ post is a public service announcement to those readers who don’t have kids)

Hello Childless Readers!  How are you today?  Probably excellent. You’re most likely doing some interesting and exotic thing like peeing by yourself.  You guys live the life!

I, on the other hand, am currently being climbed by a screaming two year old whose brother is wearing a sheet pretending to be a ghost that’s gonna eat him.  I should probably go deal with that.  Oh…wait…never mind.  Grant slammed a pick-up truck into Carter’s sheet-covered head.  So I guess that worked itself out then, huh?

Moving on. 

If you read my blog (and you must cause you’re here) you know that parenthood can be hard.  I don’t sugar coat anything for you.  You need to know what you’re getting into.  If you don’t have kids then please try to savor every second of peace and quiet you come across.  Those moments are few and far between…no…I take that back.  They aren’t few and far between, they are simply non-existent.

I tell you this out of love because…hold on…

“GRANT! Get that drum stick out of your nose!”

What was I talking about?  Oh yes.  The joys of childlessness. 

After reading some of my status updates a childless friend of mine recently commented: “You've single handily prevented me from ever re-producing!! You should do this country a favor and start teaching 10th grade!!”

Um…hello!  That’s the best idea EVER! 

I am going to start to market this blog as a form of birth control! 

I don’t know why I’ve never thought of this before.  I have in the past warned my pregnant friends to please NOT read my blog (cause it’s too late for them) but I’ve never thought to use it BEFORE they get pregnant. 

Young women will soon have their doctors saying “Are you thinking of becoming sexually active?  Ok, well then here’s the link to ‘Things Carter Says’…you may change your mind.”

Instead of carrying around a sack of flour pretending it’s a baby high school students can just have a live feed going in the classroom of things that go on in my house.  Scared straight: The Carter Edition. 

Blogging as a form of contraception.  I love it:

Girl 1:“Hey, are you on the pill??”

Girl 2: “No.  I’m on the blog.”

Do we think I need FDA approval to move forward with this plan?

Opposites

When you have more than one child you come to realize that, although you love them the same, you don’t parent them the same.

When Carter was a baby I spent countless hours reading to him, playing with him, and teaching him things.  When Grant was a baby Carter was a toddler…soooo…yeah.  I didn’t do those things as much with him. 

By 18 months Carter had every book we owned memorized.  I’m not making this up.  I have witnesses.  One of the books in his repertoire was “Opposites” by Sandra Boynton. 

Today Grant happened to pull that book out and ask me to read it.  I don’t know why, having never really gone over it with him, I expected him to just know what opposites were.  But I did…and he didn’t. 

Here’s how the reading went:

Me: “Big and small.  Short and…”

Grant: “Giraffe.”

Me: “No.  What’s the opposite of short?”

Grant: “Giraffe.”

Moving on…

Me: “Heavy and light.  Day and…”

Grant: “Moon.”

Me: “No, it rhymes with LIGHT.  Heavy and light.  Day and…”

Grant: “Sleeping.”

Pretty soon he just started naming the animals instead of actually trying to guess the word...

In and turtle.  Whisper and hippo.

Me: “Hot and…”

Grant: “Warm.”

Me: “Warm is not the opposite of hot.  Try again.  Hot and…”

Grant: “Spicy.”

At least that’s an actual phrase. 

Me: “Ok.  Hot and COLD.  Young and…”

Grant: “Dinosaur.”

Correct!  When someone is really old they can be referred to as a dinosaur.  Way to think outside the box!

Me:  “Now he’s out in the rain and she’s under the umbrella.  So he’s wet and she’s…”

Grant: “Warm” (He apparently really wanted warm to be the answer one of these times.)

Me: “No, he’s getting wet and she’s…”

Grant: “A chick.”

He needs more work on opposites. 

But clearly, instead of going over it with him again I’m…writing a blog about it. 

Toys

I have an entire playroom full of toys.  All kinds of toys.  I can’t take a step without tripping over some kind of play thing. 

My kids play with their toys every day.  However, they would be just as happy playing with a cardboard box.

I know this because one of the “toys” in my playroom is…a cardboard box.

They fill it up with different things and pretend to deliver packages to each other.  They use it as a drum set.  They throw it at each other when they get mad…

You can’t buy that kind of fun.

I’ve spent a lot of money on toy versions of actual items. 

Like vacuums. 

We have three toy vacuums in this house yet I routinely find them playing with the real thing.  Especially the attachments.  They use them as hockey sticks all the time.  They also use them as horns…in related news my kids will never be sick because they’ve built up quite the immune system this way!

They have an entire kitchen full of play food, utensils, pots and pans.  And I have an entire drawer full of missing silverware because they’d rather use the real thing. 

One day I walked into the play room to find them playing nicely together and I thought “Wow, that’s great!”  Until I realized they were playing nicely together with…a pizza cutter. 

But don’t worry.  They were slicing up fake asparagus with it.  So not only were they handling sharp objects they were also ruining their toys.  Which was just awesome all around.

I don’t know what their obsession with knives is about but they have one.  Carter once told me “I can’t wait to be big so I can use knives.”  His therapist is going to be busy, busy, busy!

Since my children are active boys they love to play outside.  We own several slides, ride on toys, balls, bats etc. etc.

Know what they play with when they go outside?  Sticks.

Know how much sticks cost? Know how much a climbing structure costs?  I’ve never claimed to be good at math but I think I got this one in the bag.

The other thing they play with outside is puddles.  One day they spent literally an hour running back and forth between two puddles.  The tricky thing about this is you can’t dictate when or where puddles will form. 

For example, these puddles happened to be pretty much in the middle of the road.  But I was at BBQ with a drink in my hand and didn’t really set my puddle placement standards too high.  Please send your nominations for Mother of the Year to….

On our recent vacation to the lake the boys discovered how awesome acorns are.  There was one in particular that they thought was the king of all acorns.  They would throw it in the water then swim to get it. 

This lasted for a while until it occurred to them that THEY ONLY HAD ONE ACORN!  Then a battle of epic proportions began.  Each child claiming that HE was in fact the rightful owner of that particular acorn.

Um…boys?  Were’ in New Hampshire.  In the woods.  Now, I’m not positive, but I THINK that if I really put my mind to it I can find another one.  In fact, I’m pretty sure the state flower of New Hampshire is the acorn. 

So you’re telling me I could have substituted a bag of acorns and a puddle for all of the water gadgets I bought to bring on vacation with us?

Note to self: WTF!

I’m never buying another toy as long as I live.

But if you want to send my kids a cardboard box full of sticks you'd pretty much be a God in their eyes.