How to Have the Coolest Cell Phone Ever

“Jack, have you seen my phone?”

I had just been talking on it ten minutes ago, but it was absolutely nowhere to be found.  I looked on the couch, in the couch, under the couch, on the back porch, in the kitchen, refrigerator, toy bins, under the beds, in beds, in the toilet, in the cupboards... but all to no avail.

“I haven’t seen it,” Jack answers.  “Where’d you see it last?”

“Evee had it for a second by the back door, but she put it down and ran off.”

Jack pulls out his phone and calls mine, but we can’t hear it ringing.  I know it’s in the house, and I know the ringer is on, so where is it?!

Then Jack, my genius husband, had the bright idea to not only look on the back balcony, but to look down as well.  There, sitting in the rocks three stories down, is my only tool for outside communication—my lifeline to the world beyond small children, dishes, and laundry.

Le sigh.

Sarah and I put our shoes on and went down to get it.  We knocked on the door of the neighbor on the ground floor.  No answer.  Dang it.  I really needed my phone back.

We went around to the back.  The back fence was only about three feet high, so I hefted Sarah over it with specific instructions to grab my phone and only my phone and come straight back.  She came back with my phone and an armful of toys I recognized that had apparently also received the Evee treatment.

And what was the condition of my phone?  A small scratch on the back, hardly noticeable.  Otherwise, it was in perfect working condition.  I held it lovingly to my chest as we walked back up the stairs, indescribably happy I didn’t have to go down and hassle with the Verizon people for a new one.

I was even happier two days later when Evee through the same phone into the bathtub.  It took about an hour for the speakers to dry out, but it still works just fine and I am one happy camper.

I suppose this isn’t as much of a “how to” as much as it is I really, really love my phone and would encourage anyone else with small children to get one as soon as possible.  Jack and I both have one and I can’t even tell you how much money we’ve saved from not having to replace them every couple months.  They’ve survived all the chewing on, and throwing, and dropping, and slobbering, and dismantling, and biting, and bathing… and I think that when they finally do die someday we will have to give them a burial with full honors for their brave service to my family.

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How to Bathe Your Child in a Joanns

Every once in a while a creativity bug snatches on to me and I feel the need to peruse a Joanns or Michaels store and spend some money on projects I will never finish.  I stick Evee in the front of the cart and Sarah in the basket, hand out some snacks and toys, and then stroll around for as long as their good behavior lasts.

During one of these outings I received a call from a family member and we got to talking… and talking.  You know how it goes.  To my delight, my children were absolute angels the entire time (and it was a long time).  Evee sat in the front chewing on her binky quite contentedly and looking around while Sarah played quietly with toys. 

After much longer than it should have taken me to realize, I began to get suspicious at how very quiet Sarah was.  I leaned forward so I could see exactly what was keeping her so attentive.

Any guesses?  With the whole inventory of a craft supply store at her sticky fingertips, what does she choose to make a mess with?  Paint.  The easiest thing in the world to clean up.

It was white paint which had apparently reminded her of lotion, so she treated it like lotion: shmeared from her ankles to her thighs and all up and down her arms.  She’d also taken to applying a fresh coat to the sides of the basket she was in, and when she’d tired of that she just dumped the rest in my favorite leather bag where it dripped all over and in to my favorite leather wallet and everything else.

I took a moment to remind myself that I was in a very public place and that my reaction could result in the calling of CPS if I wasn’t careful.

So I didn’t say a word.  But what do you do with a child covered in wet, and quickly drying, paint?  There was no way I was going to let that disaster anywhere near my car for the twenty minute drive home.

I took the only option I had available to me: I grimaced bravely and wheeled us all down to the bathroom in the back of the store.  Thankfully the room was big enough for me to push the whole cart into, so at least everyone was contained and within sight.  But now what to do with Evee?  She was too small at the time to leave in the cart untended while I dealt with Sarah’s mess.

Thankfully blessings in heaven came to me in the form of a complete stranger who took pity on me and my plight.  She held the cute fat baby and chatted with me about the joys of raising interesting children while I very carefully picked Sarah up out of the cart and placed her into the one sink.  She did not like this.  It could not have been very comfortable.  Unfortunately for her I was not in the mood to take pity, especially once I’d noticed that she’d managed to get paint on the new and very cute shirt I was wearing.

A couple hundred paper towels, a lot of scrubbing, and a few promises to Sarah of her being grounded from paint for forever and ever later, I’d finally managed to get all the paint off her skin and most of it off her clothes.  My bag and wallet were a lost cause, never to be the same again.  And the green plastic cart will forever be endowed with essence of Sarah’s creativity, as it was the last thing I cleaned and the paint had already dried.

We thanked the very nice stranger profusely (and I thanked my lucky stars she wasn’t some psycho and didn’t run off with Evee while I was up to my elbows in paint).  We went to the front of the store and paid for the ruined paint and a few other things I had thrown in the cart earlier that either had or had not been painted on as well.  It was about fifty-fifty.

But at least it was over. Until next time, at least.

The most interesting part of this whole story is that some months later I was telling it to my brother’s fiancé and she claimed to have already heard about it from a friend of hers who had passed through that Joanns bathroom while I was bathing the struggling toddler in the sink.  It made me all the happier that I had refrained from using expletives.  You never know who’s watching, right?

How to Get Ready in the Morning

The simple answer to this is: do it the night before.  If you’re going to be tied to any type of a schedule the next day the greatest favor you can do for yourself is to have everything ready a day ahead of time.

1. Clothing.  Pick out all the clothes for the next day before the kids go to sleep.  That way the next morning when your toddlers refuse the clothing choices and you have to start from scratch, at least you’ll have the argument, “But you picked this shirt last night and said it was your favorite, favorite shirt!” at your disposal.  Not that it will change anything, but it might make you feel better.

2. Breakfast.  One of my favorite things to do is make muffin batter the night before, get it all situated in a muffin tin, and have it waiting and rearing to go in the refrigerator.  In the morning it just takes twenty minutes in the oven and boom!  There you go: a hot delicious breakfast with no dishes mess.  It’s a portable meal as well, so when all your best laid plans go awry and you’re all eating them in the car as you dash to church, your children can pick that place to either A) inform you that they hate muffins and are really hungry, so what else do you have for them? Or B) quietly rip the muffin to shreds and shmear it all over their clothes and hair.

3.  Bathing.  Doing this one the night before sounds pretty common sense, but keeping them clean thereafter can be surprisingly troublesome.  Most days it will work out perfectly and they’ll be all sparkling clean for those trips to the park and preschool.  But on mornings when it’s very important that they stay clean all day (holidays, weddings, etc) they will find the means and opportunity to get dirty, no matter what it takes.  You can try to pre-empt their efforts as best you can: dead bolt the back doors, hide the yogurt, banish the dog, give everyone some Pepto to dissuade any barfing or explosive diarrhea, but it matters not.  All you can really do is give yourself enough time to give everyone a second bath on mornings that are really important.

How to Apologize to Your Child's Pre-School Teacher

“Could you stay after a second?”

I’m standing in the hallway outside Sarah’s preschool class when I hear these dreaded words.  Once again I get to partake in the awkward conversation about what Sarah did in class that day.  We’ve had talks about such things as: throwing sand in other kid’s eyes, kicking sand at other kids, biting, not sharing, not listening, not participating, wetting her pants five times in a two hour period, and basically just doing what she wants when she wants.

All of the children are directed out to their parents, one by one, their little backpacks and art projects in hand.  After the other parents have trotted off with their little tots one of the teachers stays in the classroom with Sarah and distracts her with something or other while the other teacher pulls me aside and says, “Today we had a little incident during recess.”

“Oh?” I say, hopeful that maybe it was someone else’s kid who’d done the damage this time.

“Yeah, while we were all playing outside Sarah came back in the classroom and locked all the doors.”

It takes everything I have not to laugh.  Sarah was starting to get more creative.  The most interesting thing about my conversations with Sarah’s teachers is that she has never been called out on for the same thing twice.  She gets in trouble for something, is told to never do it again, and then she never does (at preschool, at least).  Her ingenuity for new and improved ways to act out at school was truly impressive... in a very naughty way, of course.

We finish off our little discussion in the same way as all the others.  I can’t believe she did that, we’ll talk about it when we get home, blah, blah, blah.  It’s just going to end up with the same result.  We’ll be here again next week talking about her newest adventures and their consequences.

In all the months we’ve been in preschool I’ve never noticed the other parents getting pulled aside for the awkward conversation, unless they were the parents of the victims of Sarah’s sand throwing and biting phases.  I can’t help but wonder if I’m doing something wrong.  But, honestly, how do you pre-empt something like locking the teachers out of the classroom?  It doesn’t quite fall into the category of “make sure you listen to your teachers and do what they say” discussions.  After all, she did unlock the doors when they asked her to.

So, barring my coming up with every feasible way of acting out and having a talk with her about it I’m left with apologizing sincerely and often.  When they ask for treats for class parties I make home-made cinnamon rolls with sprinkles.  When they ask for cardboard oatmeal canisters I bring several.  When they ask for toilet paper rolls I bring them by the dozen.  This, in combination with Sarah’s curly-haired cuteness, I hope is enough to at least bring us to a neutral ground.

The goal is that by the time Sarah reaches kindergarten she will have mastered such skills of sitting still, listening, and playing nice with the other kids.  Two years should be long enough, right?

How to Get Through Church

This is one I never found an answer to in my parenting books.  How do you get a rambunctious, noisy, busy toddler to be quiet and still for an hour?  What do you do about baby’s nap time?  How do you fill your spiritual sponge when you’re surrounded by children who need constant attention or else they’ll be running up and down the aisles?  The books give suggestions for how to mind your toddler on airplanes, in bathrooms, at the park, at the movies, but Heaven forbid they mention church.  Surrounded on all sides by my neighbors and friends, all gathered together for a nice, quiet, spiritual meeting, the last thing I want is for my toddler to be the one wreaking havoc in the back (I’ve given up sitting near the front).

First:  How to keep them in your pew.  I always pick a pew that butts up against a wall, so at least one exit is covered.  Then we pull out the church bag.  It’s full of snacks, paper and pencils, toys, books, and a special quiet book grandma made.  This bag only surfaces on Sunday and can usually hold their attention for half an hour. 

The second half hour can be more of a struggle.  Evee is tired and starts getting really restless, so one of us gets to wrestle her as she crawls up and down and all around.   Sarah gets bored and starts pestering the people in the pews around us.  If we’re lucky there’s a family with kids behind us she can start sharing toys and snacks with.  If we’re not lucky it’s an older couple who’re actually trying to listen to what’s going on at the front. 

When all else fails and the kids are getting too rowdy, we remove them from the scene.  I usually try to make this exit right before the kicking and screaming starts, so that I’m not dragging Sarah bodily out the door behind me.  We go to an empty classroom and have a little time out and a talk about how we act in church.  Sometimes this actually works (angelic blessings, anyone?). 

Second: What about nap time?  Church starts at nine for us, and what time do babies nap in the morning?  Nine.  With Sarah we kind of just stopped going to church for a year until she gave up the first nap, but with Evee we’re trying to power through.  We take turns sitting in the mother’s lounge, or one of us sits out in the foyer with her as she has her melt down.  As long as we remember her binky and a bottle of milk it’s usually not too bad, but last week we all just went home after fifteen minutes.  The first nap, as with all things, falls into the category of: this, too, shall pass.

Third: How to get anything out of church when you have a couple of darling monster children.  I’m not exactly sure yet, but I do know that there is a difference in the weeks when we do go and when we don’t.  I know Sarah loves to go to church, and that that joy comes from something more than just getting to wear a pretty dress and do her hair nicely.  Even when she takes the opportunity to dance down the aisle like a ballerina during the sacrament hymn, I can still feel the importance of what we’re doing there as a family, and that makes it all worth it.   

Fourth:  Just ignore everyone else, unless they’re giving you encouraging advice.  My favorite people are the ones who smile at my kids as they’re fighting loudly over a toy and say something like, “My kids were just like that.  Don’t worry.  They turned out fine.”