Summer Swan Song

Here I am on the cusp of saying goodbye to another summer.  The summer may have begun with a kitchen full of fresh suds, but it has ended with an overflowing toilet, thanks to Kenny’s overzealous toilet paper usage.

Goodbye summer 2011.  I welcome this swan song. 

Goodbye $500 weekly grocery bills, tattling phone calls at work, nocturnal teenagers, and babysitters getting paid to do what I do for free.  It’s time for alarm clocks, homework, and football games. We’re now in the throes of new notebooks, pencils, and glue sticks.  When I multiply that by at least four, it makes me think we'll be lucky to have milk to pour on our corn flakes by the time our next payday comes around.

As a mother, I've experienced at least 15 of these back-to-school times.  Long have I given up my fantasy of waving my children off to school with tears in my eyes.  If I get teary, I will be wiping away tears of joy.  Within a week, folders full of homework will be left behind on a dirty dining room table and new lunchboxes will smell permanently of chicken noodle soup and sour milk.

As for Kenny, it is his first official school year as a kindergartener.  It has taken the entire summer for Kenny to resign himself to that.  I have fingers crossed for a year of nearly perfect attendance. Realistically, it’s going to take a whole lot of bribing to get him there.

For Stancey, I’m hoping it will not be another year of detention slips and power struggles.  If she needs a cause, I’m hoping it’s her brother Madison.  The two of them will be sharing the same halls at Oberlin High.  The one child I worry least about is Sam.  Inevitably, he’ll become a classroom favorite and model citizen. For him, school does not yet suck and every day is an adventure.

The only children not part of this back-to-school race are my oldest and youngest. Somehow Mayle has managed to enjoy the life of a college student without the inconvenience of the classroom, and as  much as I wish that were different, I respect her decision to postpone academics right now.

And Max, as far away as his first day of kindergarten may seem to me right now, I know all too well how quickly Mayle's first day of kindergarten morphed into her graduating from high school.  The days may crawl, but the years do fly.

Yay for the end of summer!  Yay for my own little break, even if it's condensed into a six-hour day.  Yay for the teachers who teach my kids and for the bus drivers who take them away.

Oh, and yay for Christmas break.  By then, we'll all need one.

Blessings

Publicized large families are going to be my family’s downfall.  First it was the Duggars. Now, thanks to a recent article in the Washington Post, it’s the Kilmers. These families with their wholesome values make my family look like the Osbournes.  

Without trying to sound presumptuous, having lots of kids is really not that big a deal.  I don’t understand how completely ordinary people with overactive fallopian tubes can appear extraordinary.  Trust me, managing lots of children is really just a matter of learning how to ignore.  A lot.

When I compare my family to theirs, I feel I might be doing a great disservice to all wholesome large families.

For example, the Kilmer’s have a cutesy roll call/cheer as they pull out of their driveway. 

My roll call?  It involves yelling out most of their names intermixed with a few choice words, because like a pack of wild dogs, my kids have yelped and snapped their way to gain front seat passage. To the victor--a slew of insults that range from “jerk” to nothing G-rated enough to note here.

The Kilmer children may hold hands from their respective car seats, but mine won’t.  My car seat duo flick boogers. 

The only time Sam and Kenny aren’t squabbling is when a Bruno Mars song comes on the radio.  As sweet as I may find it, Madison can’t bury his fingers far enough into his Eustachian tubes.  And Stancey, on the rare occasion she rides along, will glare through her darkly rimmed eyes before cranking up the volume on her IPod.

There is no doubt, my children are not friends.  They are siblings. It’s not “one for all and all for one.”  Rather, it’s “every man for himself,” and if you want that last piece of pizza, you better lick it. If you don’t mark it, someone will eat it.

In all fairness, not all our moments are that ruthless.  Sometimes, for no reason, Sam or Kenny will randomly blurt out, “I love you!” And as long as I can stop Madison from saying anything about their sexual orientation, the moment is golden.

Despite all of that, I still thank God each day for them--my blessings.  However ordinary I may be, I am always amazed by the extraordinariness they bring to my life. 

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

It has been about a week since our family vacation.  For four days, we roosted in the mountains of Pennsylvania about an hour northwest of Gettysburg.  This vacation was just as much about life experiences as it was about R&R.  For starters, the rigors of camping increase tenfold when you include an accident-prone toddler.  And though no trips to the emergency room were necessary, I can firmly attest that boxed wine for this traveling mom was the best kind of preventative medicine. 

It only took us six hours, three stops, and two diaper changes to make it to Burnt Cabins, Pennsylvania.  For three nights we stayed in a rented RV (which was very reminiscent of My Name is Earl).  Within a mere hour of arriving, Max managed to fall out of the camper door and Kenny’s pit stop in the camper’s restroom made it impossible for anyone to stay inside for any longer than you could hold your breath. My name may not be Earl, but it sure was fun pretending.  I’ll take polyester curtains and bad cable television over a leaky canvass tent any day. 

It didn’t take long to discover that feeding my family on the cheap was still pretty darn expensive on the open road.  Turnpike Starbucks just isn’t economical for two adults and a handful of teenagers. Even Kenny can eat only so many marshmallows and chocolate bars. I’m certain I saw a tear in Max’s eye when I finally managed to scare up some fresh broccoli on our second day. 

One thing that I had hoped would happen on our trip to Gettysburg, but didn’t, was some type of ghostly encounter. 

Lame, I know. 

After a candlelight ghost walk and a tour of one of the most haunted homes in downtown Gettysburg, it seems the only ambiguous ghostly experience we were destined to have was the face of our kitten Leonard (note:  who is still very much alive) in a timeworn windowpane.  It was probably just a foreshadowing of the litter box stench that would greet us at our front door upon our return home.  


By Friday evening, Kenny had had enough. 

“Can’t we just ride those horses and wheelchairs?”  he pleaded.

On our final night, Houdini Max figured out how to escape his port-a-crib.  I can now add to my list of life lessons how I managed to read a book, hold my plastic wine glass, and push the Billy goat that is my youngest son back into bed with one foot.

It was as I was urging him back into bed one final time that I had my “aha moment,” though not as profound as any of Oprah’s. My moment was the realization that if we spent any more money on this family vacation, we might well be living in our own RV if we didn’t go home soon.   

Next time we head back to Gettysburg, I’m going to brush up on my Civil War history and spend more time in the battlefields than I did in Friendly’s getting ice cream.  Also, I think I’ll stay in a location not as out-of-the way as Burnt Cabins Grist Mill—preferably one that has a pool. I’m all for historical, but those hairpin turns on Route 533 with a van full of kids in the dark of night was exhausting. 

I wonder, when my kids are older and John and I are gone, what parts, if any, will our kids recall?  I hope this is trip leaves a sweet memory.  As for feeding them until our next payday, I hope they still like marshmallows because it’s the only food we managed to bring home.