What I Would Do For A Clean House

What I would do for a clean house, twenty-four hours a day. Every. Day.

I cleaned today, and because I cleaned, hey-oh….I cooked dinner! I mean, I always cook dinner, but I tried tonight. Made an effort. I made a “dish”. Not just a (gross) green drink and quesadillas.

When I don’t cook, its because everything is a mess and its totally overwhelming to think about making a mess, amongst the mess. Not into it. I also think, “You know what, I gotta save myself to clean this place up! I can’t waste precious energy on cooking dinner.” So there’s that logic too.

I prioritize. 

To those of you who don’t have this problem, and don't know what I'm talking about because your house is generally very clean, 

1. I envy your drive to be type-A all of the time. You probably have cute little wicker baskets with a chalk board frame hanging on the front labeling contents like “shoelaces” and “red blocks”. 
2. I wish I had your budget, which clearly includes a housekeeper.
3. I think you need to go play with your kids and let your laundry stack up a little. Some day they’re going to have to describe their childhood in a college class, or to a therapist, or to a new girlfriend or boyfriend, and you don’t want them to say “My mother? What was she like growing up? Well, she was constantly vacuuming. And wiping down counters.” You want them to say “My mom built forts, and read us Harry Potter, and wrestled, and made my stuffed animals talk, and threw water balloons at me, and chased my dog, and tickled me until I was mad” and things like that. 

Its hard to do it all though. I get it. 

If I’m not careful, I spend my whole day changing diapers, throwing them away, refilling the diaper box with new ones, making a meal, serving a meal, cleaning up the meal, gathering the laundry, running the laundry, folding the laundry, putting away the laundry, picking up the toys, vacuuming, picking up the toys again, picking up the toys again, picking up the toys again, distributing crackers, sweeping the crackers, on and on and on and on, and before I know it, I miss the most important part of the day. Which, is teaching my two year-old that “elephant” is actually pronounced “elephant”, and not “elka”, although not to be ashamed, that’s a common mistake. 

Still. What I would do for a house that stays clean. 

Literally, let me tell you. 

I would drive my 15 year-old van for the rest of my life. The emergency brake light blinks on and off while you drive. Don’t care. 

I would jump off the bridge, at the zoo, where all the koi swim below. This is three-fold undesirable: I don’t like heights, I don’t like murky water, I don’t like being amongst fish. This particular pond is the most disgusting combination of each of those elements. Although its mostly disgusting because the fish are truly coming out of the water, piling on top of each other to get the fish food that people drop them. Its so gross to see their huge bodies, I could just barf. Piles of wet koi. I would dive into that.

I would reach out and call a yellow jacket to me, and hold it. In my closed, cupped hands, I would hold it, and let it freak out. It would sting and bite and not die, because as I said, its a yellow jacket, not a bumble bee.

These are just a few ideas.

Until I can somehow negotiate one of these trades with the universe, I will just keep doing what I’m doing. I will have a really deep-cleaned house sometimes, a really messy house sometimes, a microwaved dinner sometimes, a recipe-followed dinner sometimes, and I will just strive to keep my family on their toes with the instability of our lives. 

Surviving a Tornado (siren) with Children

The first time I heard a tornado siren was the day after we landed in Omaha. “Welcome” said Nebraska. “This is what happens here.” We were in the middle of unpacking and moving in, but I aggressively made everyone get down to the basement. Once down in the basement, a few thoughts crossed my mind. As in, 

1. So… when do we come out?
2. Is there a second siren that signifies “come out now”?
3. I have nothing down here. This is extremely boring. 
4. This is actually worse than a tornado. We have no food, or water, or toys, or diapers. Come to think of it, we will probably last eight minutes down here.
5. Should I risk my life, and run upstairs to collect some supplies? I need some kind of kit.
6. We need to paint the basement immediately, or this color alone will kill me. 

The second time I heard a siren, was a few weeks later. Justin had started at the hospital and I was solo at our house with the boys. I had just put them down for a mid-morning nap, had microwaved my cold coffee that I poured two hours ago but never got to (imagine that), and was sitting at my computer googling Home Depot’s paint department phone number, to ask if they could possibly darken the 3 gallons of paint I had previously purchased (“Hi, yes, I bought some grey paint, but I was being overly conservative and didn't want something too dark, because I know it can get depressing here in the winter with no sun, so instead I ended up with a grey that is too light, and sterile, and equally depressing… and now I'm wondering if you can maybe add some black drops to it, and like, stir it around again…I don’t really know how this works… obviously… but I think just a darker grey on the same color palette will do? Maybe like, 5 drops of black? I am an idiot, yes… yes, I did paint a swatch on the wall beforehand…). And there I was, at my desk, practicing an embarassing conversation in my head with the Home Depot guy, when I heard the siren. 

And I suffered a mild heart attack. 

I survived the heart attack and ran up the stairs. Without a plan. I was about to burst into my kids’ room when I realized I had a logistics problem. Who do I take down first? The baby or the twins? I chose the twins because Jack was in a deeper sleep. I know this, because we drilled a sight hole (as in, a front door, see-who’s-there-in-a-weird-fisheye-lens-kinda-way) into their bedroom door. A simple, yet effective way to spy on them during their “naps”. A video monitor wouldn’t work because they are the most destructive people I’ve ever met, and would pull out any device or cable that needed to be plugged in. So anyways, I checked in on them, and they were mostly asleep. Which, I should elaborate more on, so allow me this tangent…

The twins and sleeping… they have it all backwards. Here it is:

1. They jump out of their cribs. 
2. So, no more cribs. 
3. Toddler beds? 
4. No, they will out grow those soon enough. 
5. The answer, at least I thought: a full size mattress, no frame, just on the floor. They can do what they were born to do, jump and fall. But safely now.  

So they have a full size bed in their room. Yet, where do they elect to fall asleep, every nap, every night? Somewhere on the floor. With a pillow on top of them. When I look through the peephole I see an empty bed, and legs sticking out from pillows. Usually they have pulled every item out of their dresser and are lying on little nests of toddler clothes. I highly recommend, when it comes to parenting, not doing any research but rather, just doing whatever comes to mind. You end up with scenes like I just described.

Back to the tornado story. We all managed to get downstairs. Jack woke up in the process, but happily. He is perfect. The twins were crying. Standard. 

I turned on the boys’ Kidsongs singalong, then realized I should turn on the news, and find out where the funnel is headed. That brief interruption caused more crying. I ran up and grabbed our battery-less lantern. More crying. And I suddenly realized I was really back where I started, the day of that first siren, wholly unprepared. We have no food, no water. The diaper box down here is empty. Of course it is. I still don’t know when you “come out”. The only thing we do have down here now, are toys. Which lead me to this. 

For the next three years that we live in this tornado-ridden state, I will be subject to these storms. The safe haven and solution, is the basement. Our basement functions as a giant playroom. If a tornado were to tear through our house, I will be found dead, impaled, by a colorful variety of toys. 

I will be dead, in my pajamas, with toys embedded in my body.  

May this blog post serve as a last request. Please let the announcement of my death read: “She was killed tragically, by a train. Several trains, actually. Thomas, Gordon, and Percy, to be specific.”

A short while later I learned the siren was a test, that they test every first Wednesday of the month, and I woke my kids up for nothing. 

You know, all I want in this world, is to drink my coffee while its still warm. Just once. Death by toys, fine. Its pleasant enough, I guess. Just let me drink hot coffee beforehand. Please God. 

How to Properly Care for a Toddler's Teeth

Holy neglected blog. My apologies. Not that you were standing by with anticipation or anything, but my apologies nevertheless. Since I last posted, I’ve been busy with a) another baby and b) entering the HGTV dream house sweepstakes. Both very time-consuming. 

I’d like to tell you about my latest debacle as a parent: brushing teeth. Or rather, not brushing teeth. I was concerned recently that the twins wouldn’t be getting an adequate amount of fluoride for those little white daggers that have recently taken over their once-sweet little mouths. But what do I know about fluoride? Nothing really. My knowledge is limited to this: I think your teeth need it, and I think you get it from tap water. No real solid knowledge here. At our house, we drink bottled water, because LA County tap water tastes like pipes, and dirt, and what I imagine runoff and smog to taste like. So according to my knowledge of fluoride, we must be missing out. 

I had a close friend over (whom I grew up with) who’s father happens to be a dentist. One day I had her get him on the horn so I could ask a few questions about the tater tots’ new teeth. We very quickly got past the fluoride  concern (get supplements from your pediatrician) to a more pressing issue, that of actually brushing their teeth regularly. I told him a few things about how that works here. 

I brush their teeth in the bath at night. That is, when I remember to. So maybe three times a week. I don’t use toothpaste. Oh, and they pretty much just bite the toothbrush, so it really becomes a tug-a-war instead of a cleaning session. Its a very amusing game to them. Once I’ve finally wrestled the toothbrush out of the mouth of twin A, I dip it in the bathwater to “clean it off”, and I begin the toothbrush-biting tug-a-war again, with twin B. So to recap: most of the time I forget to brush their teeth, when I do remember, there’s not really any brushing going on, and for toothpaste, I use dirty bath water. Which for a fact I know they pee in, immediately, as soon as they get in the tub. 

My friend’s dad the dentist said he would double check the literature on pee-acid toothpaste water, and suggested we preform our own study if none exists. Then he said, “You wanna know the biggest issue? When four year-olds have grills? Juice in their cup. And bottles in their crib.”

And then folks, I went to my kitchen and threw Mott’s for Tots in the trash, sprinted upstairs, took the empty bottles out of their cribs, threw those puppies out the window, and promptly ran the twins a bath so I could take care of their teeth properly, like any good parent would, with pee water.