Is This It?

Do you ever have one of those, "Is this all there is to it?,  kind of days?  Every so often, I find myself in the midst of brushing my teeth in the morning before Getting Ready For School and I look at myself in the mirror and think, "Really??  This is what my hopes and dreams have amounted to? Where brushing my teeth suffices for 'getting ready in the morning' ??"  One pair of stretchy pants and an old, stained t-shirt later (which may or may not have a hole in it- today's did), and I'm good to go for the day!

Then there's the 45 minutes of asking the kids to do the same task over and over and over again, and it still doesn't get done:  "Derek, go put water in your hair and brush it.  You have bed head."  Two minutes later, " Derek, go brush your hair." Two minutes later, "Derek, did you brush your hair?" (He pretends not to hear me), ok, obviously you didn't. Go do it".  Repeat for 45 minutes until it doesn't get done, and Derek goes to school looking like a crack addict.

It's at this point that my best threats usually come out:  "Grayson, you eat that oatmeal or I swear I'll make nothing BUT oatmeal for the next 10 years!!"  or "Carissa, if you aren't ready to walk out this door in two minutes I am taking you to class in your underwear!"  or one of the best: "You guys stop fighting or there will be no treats, no movies and no fun this weekend!! And no soccer, and no volleyball, and no friends over!! I mean it!" (direct quote) I've been know to threaten to cancel Christmas on occasion.  But only after Thanksgiving.

Then the lunch packing begins.  Every kid wants something different which means if I only have turkey, but no cheese, then Derek won't eat it, unless it's on crackers, in which case he will, but not if they're in a plastic container, because then they get soggy, so only put them in saran wrap, and make sure there's ice in there so they don't get "gross".  And I must remember that Grayson only eats GREEN grapes and GREEN cut-up apples with lemon juice, not plain because they get brown and that's "gross", and no sandwiches for him because they get too smushy in the lunch box and the jam soaks on the bread and that's "gross".

One of my favorite lunch packing conversations went like this:

"Grayson do you want a ham sandwich for lunch?"
"No, mom.  Yuck!  You know I don't eat those!"
"Ok, well how about  lettuce and mustard on bread with some ham?"
"That sounds good.  Can you put some cheese on it?".

No joke.  That's seriously how it went down.

And for the record, he didn't eat the sandwich.

And don't even get me started on the daily Search For Socks.  It doesn't matter that the night before I told the boys to go pick up the 10 pairs of sock they left in various parts of the backyard, or that they've been hoarding dirty socks, crammed into crevices of their room- every morning it's a shock of epic proportions when they open the sock drawer and lo- there aren't any socks!!!!  This results in an all out scrounging for socks throughout the premises which usually ends with the dryer yielding 4 unmatched, but clean, socks.  The end of this fun is usually something like, "Mom, why don't you ever do our laundry?" or "Mom, you need to buy us more socks".  Nokay.

At some point in all of this there is a very dirty, stinky diaper that has to be changed, a carseat that has to be transferred from one car to another, a lost shoe (see above paragraph on the Search For Socks to fully understand what this entails) or a car that is literally running on fumes because the last driver forgot to fill it up the night before.

If somehow, after all of this, we are out of the door before 7:21-, (and I say out of the DOOR, which is very different from out of the DRIVEWAY, because out of the DRIVEWAY implies that everyone has found their seat in the car, including the baby, and that the inevitable Struggle For The Front Seat has been decided, a struggle that sometimes eats up another 3-4 minutes of precious time, in which the older, stronger sibling and the younger, more stubborn sibling wage an all-out battle of words and names for whomever got to the front seat first, until one relents because they realize they are going to be late/lose handball time.)- then we have a relatively easy drive.  But heaven forbid we get to that 7:25 mark- we are screwed.  If that happens, I transform into something vaguely resembling a cross between a speedway driver, a New York City cabbie, and turrets sufferer as I navigate the 4 miles to the middle school and all the other strung-out moms on the road.

At the end of it all, when the shaking subsides and I enter a house that looks like it was vandalized by the Mob while we were out, I count down the hours until I get to go through The Afternoon (much, much scarier than The Morning), and hope I can at least clean some socks and put away the crackers in the next 6 hours.

I kid you not- this stuff is real!

Perhaps I haven't properly trained my kids- I'm certain that that is part of the problem.  Or maybe they are just normal.  I don't really know.  But yes, sometimes I do ask myself, "Is this it? Shouldn't I be doing something better or more important with my life?  Can I just wear something for once that isn't stained, torn, spit-up on or really old? Can I please use the toilet once without having a kid run in to show me their scrape/school paper/lego creation? Do the curious habits of 7-9 year old boys have to be the topic of my conversations and thoughts instead of something more intellectually stimulating?"

But those thoughts are beside the point.  The point is that this IS IT for now.  THIS is not forever.  THIS is what I chose.  It's not what I hoped and dreamed about in college ( "I'm going to save the world one river at a time, man!"), or even what I dreamed of in grade school playing MASH ("I'm going to live in a mansion and drive a limo and work at a restaurant!"), but THIS is what each decision along the way has become.  The babies, who have become children, who have become independent beings with unique thoughts, desires and opinions need me and need me now, and I CHOSE to be their mother.

So here's to another crazy morning tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that...until these days are over, and I find myself wishing that they weren't.