So You Think You Can Dance?

We had the pleasure of attending the PTA program last night; 100 or so remarkably well-behaved 2nd graders, assorted staff members and PTA-ers, and bleachers-full of fanning sweating parents and younger siblings.

What could have been a most odious evening in a non-climate controlled box of gymnasium was surprisingly entertaining.

Each class had to present a choreographed dance and then they combined to shake their groove thang to the Macarena and several other numbers. Their gym teacher must have quite the sense of humor because those kids had moves! They actually know how to do the sprinkler move, which despite my swell style I haven't yet mastered. The John-Travolta-eye thing, the putcha-hands-ina-air (whoo whoo), even air guitar; I tell ya, these kids were cool!

Any time I try gettin' jiggy wid it I get shouted down and banished from wherever the music is playing. Sheesh, my kids haven't even reached double-digits yet and already I embarrass them.

(evil laugh)

Nekkid no more--sorta

Rascal has consented to use gitchies after all. I don't think he really gets it, though.

Today while sorting laundry, for example, he wore his undies on his head. Then his bear wore them. Last, Kye had the pleasure... he was a little less pleased. Rascal laughed so hard he almost peed his--

well, he would have peed his pants if he would have been wearing them.

Back to sorting laundry. After the Nemo gitchies had all been tried out, he moved on to Husband's pile. He held them up in front of his eyes, thought for a while and then--

"Ooh, big gitchies!"

He whipped them on his head and ran around the house roaring. Kye squealed with laughter and scooted over to the change table, ripped out the carefully stacked diapers and chucked them around the room.

I ranted and raved at the two of them, but apparantly my red face, flaring nostrils, and huffy noises were just fuel for the fire. For a brief second they looked at me surprised, then giggled and finished the job.

Rascal logic

"Dat agusting, mama!"

Agusting. Rascal's word du jour, usually delivered with hysterical laughing and pointing. Although we've completed the main potty-training stage, there are still many accidents. Current "wisdom" says parents should simply disregard undesirable behavior because reactions (either positive or negative) validate it.

Whatever!

I can't stop myself from at least informing Rascal how gross stripping soiled underwear and pants off wriggling legs is to me in the hopes that he will be sufficiently repulsed and do his nasty on the potty for a change. I can dream, can't I?

The upside is that Rascal now finds poopy accidents agusting. The downside?

"Mama, me no eat. Dat agusting!" Giggling at his pile of mashed potatoes.

"Mama, Kye have 'tinky. Dat agusting!" Shrieking with delight when Kye farts.

"Mama, no clothes. I yaykit. Dat agusting!" Remember, he prefers more casual attire.

"Mama, you no yaykit. Dat agusting!"

Uh, wait a sec...

Battle Scars

Today I got a hickie. It's been a while.

Last time I got one, my father laughed. It wasn't, needless to say, the reaction I expected.

Today's scarlet beauty came courtesy of Kye, clutching a little bit of loose-ish chest skin somewhere between my neck and boob in his talon-tipped claw. Twisting. Yanking.

Me - Shouting. Frantically loosening. Checking for Permanent Damage.

When Husband saw it, he laughed.

Yes, this is what I have to deal with. If it's not The Claw yanking my bottom lip down over my collarbone or my eyelid across my nose, Big Tooth makes an appearance.

Incoming!!

Wet, dripping jaws of Death distract me from its approach with peals of baby laughter and a fat little body pinioning Mama on the picnic blanket with ominously foul-smelling diaper firmly planted on my ribcage.

Bottom line: were it not for the bony nature of a nose, it would have had a hickie today too.

Mama's new best friend

MissChickie has a best friend. She calls it the Braun Silk Epilator. I called it 'attack of the killer bees'. Somehow I just don't get the idea of yanking out the hairs God put there for supposedly some perfectly good reason. ;)

I have a different best friend. He does many things for me - provides exercise, performs a necessary task, and drowns out the shouts and screeches of my children. Obviously, the perfect multi-tasker. I am talking about--

my lawn mower.

Sure, he's stinky and rattles, but many an unwanted toy has been conveniently "taken care of" when left in his path. Even some of Twit's corpses, although it was unintentional!

Take today, for instance. Several Freezie-pop wrappers, an absolutely disgusting tiny bath toy left behind by the previous owners and tasted by Twit, Rascal, and Kye over the last few months (why didn't I get rid of it sooner? One of the three has been harboring it in a secret location), and assorted twigs and sweetgum balls (pictured) that pepper our lawn by the berzillion. All choppity-chop lawn fertilizer now.

But getting back to the most important aspect. I usually do two or three swipes of the lawn and then go looking where all the kids have wandered. This time, I caught them waiting for me. Standing there completely calm (but with faces screwed into position), 2 of them broke into wails as soon as they saw me coming. Great timing kids.

Yes, I must be that dumb. Actually, I just turned around, yanked on the cord and spent more quality time with my best friend.

When it rains, it pours!

During a momentary lull in our daily chaos, I urgently needed a telephone break with my sister. I was behind on the family gossip and then there was recent plot developments on a certain show we watch (which I will never admit in public) that required detailed analysis. We gabbed for maybe 3 or 4 minutes.

Then the lull passed. I suppose it was the 'calm before the storm' or something.

Kye began to hitch his way up my pant leg, grunting with effort. The noises drew Rascal away from Christmas of Enchantment, who decided now would be a good time for a snack. I hobbled over to the fridge with Kye still firmly attached to my calf and pulled out a yogurt - usually a safe choice.

Well it was the wrong thing this time, and Rascal started to wail. When he gets into full turbine-strength bellows, there's not much you can do to stop it even if you have the sheer luck of figuring out what, exactly, you did wrong.

So at this point, I asked Tantie to "hang on a sec" because not only was the ambient volume an issue, but I also couldn't keep the handset wedged under my chin with two squirming boys fighting for total lap domination.

Somewhere in the midst of all this wonderfulness, Tweenie came in asking if BFF could come over. She had to shout to be heard. At this point, Tantie had been hanging on for many secs, so I snatched up the phone so she knew I was still there.

"I'm sensing this isn't the best time to talk," she brilliantly deduced. But I wasn't ready to relinquish the few moments of adult conversation I get in a day, so I struggled to talk, pacify, and keep from injury as best I could.

That's when Rascal bit me in the butt. You may recall this has happened before. By the time I had all the kids sorted out (Kye in his crib, Tweenie working on homework, and Rascal in Time Out), Tantie had to go.

Apparently she has a life. Go figure.

And so it begins...

Tweenie always dumps out her book bag in the front hall when she gets home from school and it drives me nuts! On this occasion, though, it was worth it.

I smudged out the names to thwart any stalkers that may happen by my little blog, but the note was in fact signed and addressed to my daughter. Who's much too young to even play boyfriend/girlfriend during recess, never mind receive love notes.

What did she do about this? It was pretty hilarious; she tattled to the teacher because she was mad about it. In the end, it turns out the note was a prank pulled by another boy.

Before I found out that particular detail, though, I showed the note to Husband.

"Git out yer steel-toed boots, honey, 'cuz ya got some butt-whuppin' ta do."

Actually, Husband was not as amused as I was. He questioned me very thoroughly about the boy involved - did I know him? His family? Is it a friend of Tweenie's? Where did you find this? When? What did Tweenie say about it?

I snorted and laughed the whole time, which didn't improve matters. Neither did my explanation that this sort of thing happened to me at this age too. Not impressed.

The rest of the day, Husband sighed and talked about how our kids are growing up so fast... yeah, a little reminder like a love letter will have that effect I guess.

Side effects may include--

So we got Rascal on the yaykit train to help him learn to put his peebeep and 'tinky in the potty. Now we have to train him to put his clothes back on.

"No itchies!", which is the Rascal-ism for gitchies.

He has Thomas the Tank Engine and Finding Nemo itchies. Apparantly they're soooo last year. He has a birthday coming up, and Gamma has as much as promised him some Lightning McQueen itchies. Who knows, maybe that'll do the trick.

He has also decided not to wear anything for bedtime, and so far we're accident-free! However, this has opened up the door to a whole new getting-out-of-bed opportunity. It used to be he'd ask for milk or a certain blanket or toy, but we had worked around that after several months of effort. It came to the point where he realized no amount of asking was going to get my attention. My policy (such as it is) was to respond to the first 2 or 3 requests and then the store was closed for the night.

Now, all he need say is that he has peebeep or 'tinkies and I'm flying up the stairs to attend to the little driblets he rations out over the 2 or so hours bedtime takes to complete. A few times I have tried to hard-line it with him and not allow him to get up, but then he makes a mess and teaches me a lesson.

Sometimes I wonder who is being potty-trained here.

A mother's worth

From time to time I feel the need to wax philosophical. Despite the tone of my blog thus far, I don't find everything funny, at least not until several days after the fact. Some things just never get funny with age, and so we are left with my other voice - the good ole rant 'n rave. I also reserve the right to have 6 different points (not necessarily related) that I will attack simultaneously. It's ok, Husband doesn't read my blog and won't get annoyed about it!

I was reading on MSN about the dollar value of mothering. They say a stay-at-home mom (SAHM) should earn over $138,000/yr, and that a SAHM passes up about $1 million in income, pension and other benefits if she gives up her career for her family. These stats always seem to pop up right around Mother's Day, as if that's the only day when a mother's value is worth mentioning.

I have several issues with the whole thing. First, it amazes me that we still have this debate. That a SAHM performs many jobs that would be expensive to find replacement for should be obvious to anyone. When I was recovering from my C-section last year we had a cleaning lady come in for a few hours every Monday. Cost us $50 each time and that was just for floors, bathrooms and surfaces, not picking up. The figures quoted in the MSN articles don't surprise me at all; I think if you replaced every job a mother performs you would come to the same conclusion. I don't think it properly represents an average family situation though, in that many of the jobs listed would still be done by a parent anyway (eg. driver, launderer, psychologist, etc.). Maybe if dad didn't pitch in at all, or if one of the parents were deceased the figure would be more accurate. Bottom line, though, is that a mom does many things that go unnoticed when completed but would be expensive to outsource.

However, I don't like that the emphasis is on a mother's tasks. To me, my job entails much more than cleaning and stocking the pantry. Spending time with my children, playing and teaching them has more value than a well-trained sitter doing the job for me. What value do my children place on being all day with the person that loves them more than anyone else on this earth? My daughter says to me she loves that I'm waiting at home for her when she steps off the bus. Would it be detrimental for my kids to be in daycare? Probably not. Preferable? No.

Every so often I get cabin fever and calculate what the outcome would be if I worked "in the real world". Let's say for argument's sake daycare costs $30/kid/day. I'm sure it's more in the big cities. My daughter would go to an after-school program; the one at her school costs $35/week. Add to that each month another $150 or more for fuel and insurance for my vehicle and another $100 or so for a work wardrobe. Then consider that I wouldn't have as much time for housework and cooking, which means I would bring the cleaning lady back and probably buy more takeout - let's say the food costs go up 25-30%, which for our family means $150 more.

All told, this increases my monthly costs by about $2100, which translates into $13/hr after taxes. This is just to cover my costs. I am a recent college grad with very little experience in my field. Where I live, someone with my skill set might start around $30-35,000. This works out to $15-17.50/hr before taxes. Factor in taxes and the loss of tax credits your husband would otherwise receive if you didn't work, and you'll quickly see that in this scenario you are working for free or possibly losing money. Obviously as you gain experience you'll earn more, but the first years will be hard and you lose this valuable time with your babies. Once they are older I might reconsider. Talk about a mother's worth? It may be that a working mom is worth less than her SAHM counterpart.

Where does this leave me? For now, I am happy to stay at home and halfheartedly browse around for opportunities that would allow me to work from home. I take pride in preparing from-scratch meals that are properly planned and nutritionally balanced. I like that I can attend school and extracurricular events with my daughter and storytime at the library with my sons. I love not having to do my hair or get out of my comfy clothes unless I'm leaving the house. I'm glad I have time for talking to my friends and family on the phone. I'm grateful that I can be the one to kiss the skinned knee and make a total mess of the kitchen baking cookies with my little apes.

Cost of a professional babysitter for a day: $100
Raising my children myself: priceless
There are some things in life money can't buy. For everything else, well, you know the rest.

I would love to hear your opinions on this topic!