My kids are TOO popular!

Usually this would be every parent's dream...to have kids who everybody else's kids want to play with, but enough's enough!

When I drop the kids off at their preschool class (they go together) the other kids call out like a fan club "Tristan! Ashlyn!" Cheers all around. Then Carter invites himself over for a play date. And Justin wants to come over too. So I agree that maybe we can meet at the park (since my house is usually a disaster midweek) and Tristan tells me to text Carter's mom and invite Madelyn too (his crush from last year who has moved on to Kindergarten this year), meanwhile Ashlyn is inviting Roxana and McKenzie to a sleepover?

And the worst part is that I can't keep track of all the other mom's names, and I really don't have much, if any, free time during school to arrange such social engagements. Because it's not really just about the kids, it's about the moms too! It takes energy and effort to forge new friendships, but it's always really rewarding and comforting to hear other women my age share similar struggles with the insanity of parenthood.

Becoming friends with other moms has it's equal share of getting even funnier inside stories of your kids. Logan's mom, Jennie, told me that he was reporting each day that Ashlyn was absent from preschool (she had a really bad cough and runny nose so I kept her home for a week) and then the day that both the kids were absent he was very worried about them! And I got to share with McKenzie's mom that when it was Tristan's turn to bring a preschool snack he wanted to get the pancakes on a stick again because McKenzie really liked them last time.

It is so fun to watch the kids build their first friendships, and they are so sweet that it reminds me how important friends are. As busy as I get with school and life, it's absolutely necessary to my sanity (and the kids too!) that I slow down and make time to chill with a good friend (or a new friend) and appreciate the comfort of not being alone.

So, in my efforts to help my kids they are actually helping me remember the importance of friends at all ages. One hour park play dates have been a reasonable time commitment and just enough for everyone to wind down. While I may have ruined my suede boots in the sandbox, it was worth making the time for friends and I am proud of my kids for being so popular.

O Christmas Tree...

Yay! Winter break is here, which means I finally have time to put up the Christmas tree with the kids and get the house feeling warm and cozy (and clean) again for the holidays. We dragged out the good ol' 8 foot fake pine from the garage (which wasn't hard to do since we never put it back up in the rafters after last Christmas) and assembled it with ease. Now that my son is 5 years old he helped me heave each of the three heavy sections up raise the tree to life. Then I began the ponderous task of fluffing, but really I don't mind it, and so it goes on for several days after because I need to fill the gaps to make it look less see-through. Once the lights are up, and the kids have caked it in decorations (though somewhat disproportioned heavily on the bottom third of the tree), it will look real as Christmas itself!

Now, people seem to be firmly on one side or the other of the Christmas tree argument of real versus fake. Most of this opinion seems to be formed based on childhood experiences. Personally, I grew up with the real thing and have fond memories of it as part of my traditional Christmas experience. But my mother-in-law was allergic to pine trees so my husband grew up with the artificial trees.

I have found that the majority of real tree enthusiasts are actually quite snobbish about it, as if it's a matter of refined taste and superiority. As if artificial trees were like worshipping a false god. They try to plea to your senses by conjuring up emotional attachments to the scent of pine and the prickly needles that stick in the carpet and the fact that it's alive and real.

Then there are the fakies. Some claim environmentalism, that they are saving trees from the senseless murder, that they are only glorified then discarded on street curbs. Others, like me, just want to be economical about the matter. Trees are frickin' expensive! Fake ones are cheaper and last longer, and won't scratch the roof of my car each year when I have it tied down and drive it home. Many of the new trees even come with the lights already in them, how cool! Fakies see the practicality of owning a reusable tree.

Although artificial trees can't replace the scent of the real thing, they are a decent alternative. I just burn a pine-scented candle, and mop with pine-sol. And nobody has to crawl under the tree to water it, or in my case forget to water it. Memories of tree lots and the festivity in the event of picking a tree are fun and irreplaceable. But I don't want a tiny pine tree, I want a big one, and if that means I have to go the fake route, so be it. I might not be fully converted, but I'll never be a tree snob. And the kids hang the ornaments without such cares.

Getting Lost

Okay, so I have suffered on countless occasions from my lifelong battle at being directionally challenged. And yet it still frustrates me each time I get lost, or take the long way there (in my case it's usually the extra extra long way).

My natural inclination is to make friends with people at school and I want to be part of a real community of people who are into writing, like me, for the first time ever. But it can be frustrating sometimes. There is nobody in my life that I can have an honest and educated conversation about poetry, with unless I get them drunk first...and even then it's a stretch. So, getting out of class early and being invited to a new friend's b-day party was great. Such a change from last week, when I wanted to cry like a baby everyday because of the demands of four upper division classes and two crazy children at home.

But navigating my way one mile from the student parking lot was too far for me (without the comfort of my navigation system that is in the car I usually drive, but did not drive on this particular day, ugh) to go without just accepting the fact that I probably won't find it. This is called coming to terms with being directionally challenged and obviously I waiver back and forth between denial and acceptance.

I think I made it to the parking structure, though I can't be certain. But I couldn't find my friend who invited me anywhere in sight! I walked around, though not really sure which way to head. I think I even found the right apartment building, again I can't be sure. And I remembered that in all my brilliance I told her I would call her when I got to the parking lot, not realizing that I didn't even have her phone number in my phone! Ahhhhhh! This is the story of my life, I just do these things sometimes that don't make sense and end up making my life more difficult but I can't get mad at anyone but ME because I did this to myself!

So, there I was wandering through the parking structure, aimlessly loitering and feeling weirder each time a guy or group of people would pass me. I was convinced they were looking at me suspiciously, although they probably could have cared less. Here I am in a parking structure I've never been to before, by myself, with NO pepper spray or self-defense techniques to speak of (I can't exactly defend myself with yoga). What was I thinking? (Ok, yes, these were mostly people of my peer group (ok, younger!)) Why was I, a twenty eight year old married mother of two (wow sounds even dorkier when I write it out) intimidated by anything?

Well, it was dark and I became nervous and had an unsettling feeling of complete vulnerability. I like to be in control, so these anxieties and fears multiplied inside me until I had convinced myself that it was hopeless to wait out in the dark (and it was really dark, although barely 7:00) and got back into my car.

I drove around the parking structure again. I drove out and around the front of the apartment building. It was a lost cause. I didn't want to ditch my friend and the party, but I couldn't come up with any other ideas to get ahold of her or find the right apartment, and I didn't even think she had my phone number, so I figured it was a lost cause. So I hit the road and cursed myself for even thinking I could pull it off. I'm a mom, after all. Am I even allowed to have college friends?

And wouldn't you know that my friend would call me the second I enter the freeway and am immersed in what else but rush hour traffic. I was relieved she got ahold of me, I wasn't trying to run away and make her think I really was abducted and raped or something, but felt super lame at not being able to just turn around and still meet up, having literally just reached the point of no return. And so I drove home and replayed my failed attempts to be both friend and mom, because by this time the kids would be nearly asleep when I got home anyways. And I had to finish homework due by midnight. Waste paper and toner printing out assignments then realizing errors and reprinting, then reprinting a third time...

My Double Life

is becoming increasingly split. Having just come up for air after barely making it through my son's 5th birthday, midterms, Halloween, picking classes for next quarter, researching MFA programs, keeping deadlines straight, and the always-there reality of a mortgage payment that's twice as much as the people renting the same model house down the street. I don't even know who I am. Or which one of me I am right now.

As a student, I feel the exhilaration and stress of my senior year. I am excited to be finished, but all of a sudden "finished" doesn't really mean the same thing. Can a piece of paper and a silly ceremony where everyone wears frumpy mumu's and square hats really mean that I am done? changed? employable? If I can barely keep up on college assignments, how can I expect to be able to work full time? or go to Graduate School? Where can I even go to Graduate School when I am anchored here with my family? What am I even going to do with the kids next quarter when I will have to be at school Monday through Thursday, with child care coverage only on Tuesdays and Thursdays until 5 pm and classes that go until 6 and 7 pm??? and I have ZERO flexibility on the classes that I need to graduate, if I want to in fact graduate some day!

As a mom, I have this crazy biological urge that compels me to take care of my kids, and not just by providing their basic needs like feeding them and wiping their butts. I enjoy doing stupid arts and crafts projects, which are basically any combination of glue, construction paper, and stickers; dressing up my daughter as a princess and watching Disney movies that I am not too proud to admit I really enjoy; going to Disneyland, the park, the Zoo, Grandma's. And yet here I am this very moment yelling at my son to just be quiet for 5 minutes, just stop asking me questions for 5 minutes, just let me write for 5 minutes, I swear I could save the world if I just had 5 minutes of peace and quiet! Could everybody just leave me alone???

Then I feel bad. Bad mom for ignoring her kids. Bad student for ignoring her studies in order to pay attention to her kids.

Suddenly it feels as if my two lives are diverging, and I have to lasso them in and remind them that we need to work together.

Is what I'm trying to do even possible?

Dreaming of Disneyland

Some days you just feel defeated from the moment you blindly slam the alarm clock and regret such commitments such as morning classes. Okay, it doesn't start until ten, but I gotta be up by seven to leave the house by eight to get to the university preschool by nine and make it to class by ten. Whew. It was exhausting just saying that.

Yesterday was supposed to go smooth. I stayed up way past my ten o'clock bedtime reading and studying in order to finally catch up. I was feeling tired, but confident about making it through class. But, ugh, group work. Sometime it's tolerable, like when it's in a classroom setting and you are forced to awkwardly converse or role-play with that weird long-haired dude who might actually be, no, definitely is, twice your age. But, yesterday I thought would be a breeze. Four smart, intelligent, and quite pretty girls writing a two page analysis of one chapter of a novel. Cake. Right?

I had never met one of the girls in my group. I guess you could say we were either too much alike, or...completely opposite. I think she was crazy, because she was driving me to talk to myself. I had to stare far away from her, into the library books around us and tell myself, Don't say it, just walk away, no, don't walk away, that would be immature, just politely agree, but she makes no sense. So, I stayed on and endured, but didn't hold back completely. My friend in the group totally avoided making eye contact with me because she could tell I might just go off any moment. Explode my pressurized word ammunition with no holds barred at this pretty little thing.

But remember the crappy thing about making a scene at school? You have to see everyone again at the next class. So, I couldn't be mean, as much as I reeeeaaaaallllllyyyy wanted to! Maybe I've been watching too much Chelsea Lately and she is igniting my inner bitch. The two classes that followed this mind grating experience tested my inner strength even more, the fun surely didn't stop at group homework time. I dealt with irritating people, then my first graded assignments turned back with "barely okay, could be good," and an intense workshop on a lame catalogue poem I wrote about my closet. Gotta appreciate honest feedback. Really. It's great. Very character-building, I think. But, remedy for shitty day? DISNEYLAND, bitches!

I dreamed all night of our plans to celebrate at my favorite place with my sister for my niece's 5th bday. The sky was So-Cal blue and cloudless, the crowds were not suffocating, lines were fifteen minutes, kids were happy...ahhh, a child's happiness, more impressive is the happiness of four children under five and no major meltdowns, which by itself makes a great day. Although, while driving home in traffic, which was right at the kids' bedtime, I looked over at my husband and said "Maybe we should go alone next time?" and he smiled in agreement. Back home. Kids are alseep, thanks to the long car ride, and I already have to snap back into the reality of doing homework due tomorrow.

But I will dream of Disneyland, and resent my alarm.

I'm gonna miss sleeping in...

Whatever that means to a mother of two preschoolers. Sleeping in changes meaning with each new phase of life. So, with a three year old and a four year old, sleeping in really means refusing to get out of bed until I can't block out the spanish speaking cartoon characters who are literally yelling at me through the neon glow of the TV. Especially with the early rising summer sun, the kids wake up at about six thirty a.m. Lucky for me they are just cuddly enough in the morning to climb into my bed and watch cartoons until I am ready to get up. I can get even more snooze time with the recent addition of our new babysitter, they call her iPad. I just need an app for making breakfast and I'm really in Heaven.

Buying some time in the morning is worth the cost of an iPad. I might even buy two to occupy both kids and maybe double my snooze time. But, even with this kid-friendly gadget, my current version of sleeping in is really only eight o'clock. Goodbye sleeping in, it's Back to school for this mom and her kids. And going Back to School means that I have to wake up, get out of bed and get ready to leave the house by eight. I might even have to set an alarm clock! Something I have never had to do since I had kids.

I will be missing my lazy summer mornings where all I had to do was:

Wake up to whiny child staring at me and peeling my eyelids open.
Grumpy child pulls me to the bathroom by my finger to help with potty.
Climb back in bed and get whacked in forehead by remote for TV.
Hope that the first thing to come on is a cartoon,
But not Dora or Barney.
Slowly drift back to sleep for approximately 1-2 minute intervals,
In between breaking up fights
And explaining why this TV doesn't fast forward like the one downstairs.
Repeat for 30-60 minutes, or until I give up and get up.
Once I go downstairs I clock in to my mommy duties:
breakfast, dishes, floors, wiping counters, wiping bums and on and on.

Oh, but those days are gone with the 100 degree temps of summer, and my life will begin each weekday with:

Wake up to sleepy child pulling my arm out of the warm blankets.
Snuggle squirming child for five minutes before declaring, I'm up, and making it so.
Do a quick face wash and makeup to force myself awake.
Scramble downstairs, eyeballing the roman numerals of large black clock on the wall
Counting down the minutes I have to feed the kids, pack the lunches, get them dressed, dress myself, wipe the spilt cereal, run back in for sunglasses, run back in for the inevitable last minute potty break then load the car, fill up with gas,
And go to school.

Drive for forty five minutes in the throes of freeway congestion
With kids who refuse to stop talking and watch the DVD player.
Pass my exit for school to reach the preschool, keeping an eye on the car clock's digital numbers
Counting down the minutes until class starts.
Figuring out how many minutes I need to sign in the kids and drop them off
In classrooms on opposite ends of the building (15-20 minutes)
Backtrack to the student parking lot (5 minutes)
Park (5 minutes)
Walk briskly to campus (15-20 minutes)
Take off my cardigan since I'm sweating from the walk (2 minutes)
Hit the bathroom to freshen up and so that I don't have to go after I buy food,
Because I don't want to take food in the bathroom (5 minutes)
Grab a bagel and fresh oj for breakfast (10 minutes)
Make it just in time for my first class!

So, if you read my summer mornings and wondered what could I possibly miss about that??? You can see what I'm in for with Back to School and that first description starts sounding pretty good, huh?

Fall Signals...New Shoes?

A cool foggy morning following Labor Day surely signals Fall is here, and Back to School is around the corner. After a hot, lazy summer of flip-flops and tank tops it's time to put on the socks and sneakers and dress to impress for the new batch of preschoolers. With two kids now attending the University preschool, many people will think they are twins, I'm sure. I'll get the questioning looks, disguised as sincere smiles and flattery about how young I look. But with the potty training in the past I look forward to the kids' new routine, even though it means I am going back to school too. My rigorous schedule of classes will be a challenge, but I just have to make it to Spring then I will finally be a college graduate!

So, back to school. I always get excited and anxious. I look forward to being productive, creative, busy. I also know that it means sacrifice. Drive thru dinners, looking past the pile of dishes and wearing outfits twice before washing. Ignoring the kids, or worse...yelling at the kids, while I try tirelessly to read 300 pages the night before midterms. But even with procrastination I get it done, and it feels good. I like pushing it to the deadline, the pressure, the rush of working obsessively to type the words out into some well-thought analysis, the realization that I can do it when I finally set out to.

Fall is finally here. We all have new shoes. Tristan has some white sneakers with navy velcro straps, Ashlyn has silver ballerina slippers also with velcro strap, and I have bronze ballet flats with flowers embellished on their toes, no velcro. We are ready to face a new crowd. I will be excited until I am actually sitting there in my first class, but then I can look down at my new cute shoes and smile.

By the way, we all can jump higher and run faster now, too.

Do I Love Summer? Let me count the ways...

Ahhhhh summer at last. After a crazy quarter of going to school 5 days a week and dragging the kids around to and from preschool it has been unbelievably relaxing to finally snooze in the morning. And by snooze I really mean that I refuse to get out of bed until 8 and try to drift back to sleep even when the kids come climbing into my bed at 6:30 or 7 am and I put cartoons on to hypnotize them but never really quite go back to sleep. I think it really just postpones the inevitable crawl downstairs followed by breakfast, dishes, laundry...which of these am I dreading?

Let's see, breakfast (and every other subsequent meal) has become an hourlong struggle to force feed my children. I am not trying to make them fat, but every other parent will understand the desire for their picky preschoolers to simply eat...without making it a battle.

Dishes really aren't that bad since I have a dishwasher, although my dishwasher is getting old and can rarely fit a whole sink full of dishes in one load, so what should be a quick clean up is actually 2 loads of dishes, and my dishwasher takes what seems like 3 hours to cycle, which cannot be very energy efficient, and still there are food scraps in the forks.

Laundry, oh laundry, my arch nemesis. I have finally come to the horrific realization that my everyday chore to "finish laundry" will never ever ever ever be complete...as long as my family gets dressed each day there will always be dirty laundry. This is eternity....laundry. I can get into a good groove with the washing and drying and even the folding most of the time. However, the putting away is what loses me. And get this, when the laundry is put away, we are always whining about having to run upstairs to get the kids clothes when we are used to them being conveniently on the pool table in the front room. I know, decorating at it's finest. The pool table, of course, was purchased before we had kids, and this much laundry! I must say, it is quite a nice laundry table, but it does create quite a "wow" when people walk in the front door to be greeted by piles of clothes stacked 4 feet high and covering any kind of sign that what is underneath used to be a pool table.

Ah, lazy summer, breakfast table showdowns, dishes out the wazoo and drowning in piles of clothes. Is it any wonder I am ready to go back to school? I am already tired of all this "free time."

On my way to school today...

The typical Thursday approaches and I am dreading the long day ahead, classes until 6:30 at night that puts me home at 7:30 after leaving for school at 8 am....whew long day! But the bright side is that once it’s over I only have one short class on Friday and the whole weekend ahead....yay! Of course this enthusiasm for freedom is really the knowledge that once the school week is over the housework begins. After turning my head away from the tower of dishes overflowing the sink and the heaps of wrinkled clothes and leaning stacks of laundry that blanket the pool table, Saturday and Sunday transform me into a cracked out housekeeper, busily trying to mop and dust simultaneously, and I’m lucky to get laundry done, folded and crammed into a basket in the right person’s room...the whole concept of putting laundry away is just a lost cause at the rate we go through clean clothes.

But this day we were running late, Tristan slept in until 8, and I hate waking up such a sleeping angel, especially since when I wake him up he is already resentful at me for being awake (hm, can’t imagine where he gets that from) and the mood of the morning is already set to stress level: yellow. We pack up the car as if going on a road trip out of state for a week, but this is the baggage that goes along with having kids. I’ve got their jackets, pull-ups, wipes, sunscreen, spare clothes, travel-potty, and a lunch bag for their picnic dinner with my friend who babysits them on campus for my last class of the day (since the daycare closes right as that class begins and if I don’t take that class it will postpone my graduation until the following Fall).

Almost there....we exit the freeway, make our way to the daycare/preschool when Ashlyn says she’s sick, and I dismiss it somewhat because this girl is a drama queen and always feigns illness as part of her character study. But the strawberry-banana yogurt vomit that spews down her chin and slimes her entire front side, even finding a way to get in her strawberry curls of hair, makes me feel like mother-of-the-year at reacting to my child’s sick cues. At least I am only half mile from parking and not stuck in the sticky traffic that began our journey this morning, turning a five mile stretch of freeway into a twenty minute study of bridge construction and impromptu preschool lesson about cranes and diggers.

After using an entire package of wipes to bathe Ashy, I wring out the carseat and soaked straps while the kids hang out in the back of the SUV blowing bubbles and coloring in their coloring books as I hold back my own urges to vomit at the stench of the mess that’s now absorbed into my skin like lotion. I guess the thing that makes me a real mom now is how I don’t rush home and hop right into the shower, but just spray some Victoria’s Secret Vanilla Lace body spray on me and rub antibacterial gel all over. Good as new!

Back at home now when I should be in class, but I haven’t missed one yet this quarter so I will be forgiven...and it gives me a chance to start and finish the midterm essay that’s due tomorrow morning...and then I have the whole weekend to relax.

Doing Homework

I am in the kitchen simmering soup, stirring mashed potatoes and buttering rolls when I look at the kitchen table that needs to be set. As I look at the open laptop and books and paper scattered about, amongst play-doh and Lucky Charms, I realize that I was right in the middle of doing my homework...so how did I suddenly appear in the kitchen making dinner?

Well, I remember my two year old princess asking me to put on her Belle dress, and her crown (her shoes she put on by herself) then scurry away only to appear moments later with the inevitable VHS of the classic Disney movie Beauty and the Beast. I admit that I am very proud inside that this is her favorite princess movie (since Belle is the brunette princess who loves books!) So of course I am pulled into the playroom to put the movie on for her, hoping that it would also provide me with some quiet time to finish my homework. Of course I have to rewind it first, (blast you VHS! although DVDs are almost as bad with their unskippable menus!) as I patiently rewind it I realize that many of the other VHS tapes are in need of rewind, so I que those up in my special VHS rewinder.

As I do this the Belle song comes on and Ashlyn (princess) just lights up and begins to sing, with basket and book in hand just as Belle does (well, a halloween bucket from Jack-in-the-Box and the Book of Mormon, which really does resemble the book Belle carries). Soooo sweet! So I call in my husband to see our little starlet in action. In the middle of her performance he discovers a heinous smell that is almost immediately recognized as our dog pooping in the house! I am fairly strong when it comes to changing a bad baby diaper, but this dog poop just instantly hits my puke reflex and I have to hold my breath ‘til I think I’m going to pass out.

Going back into the playroom, where the smell was least pungeant and after a thorough spray of Glade Apple Cinnamon Air freshener all over the house twice over, I see my little princess now with her basket on one arm and book in her other, she is totally mimicking Belle’s character and acting out her own performance. I almost cry in slightest hopes of her living out my childhood dreams of becoming a star, and am not sure if I want to cry out of excitement or fear. I really don’t.

Looking at the clock it is almost six, and the dinner hour. That means I need to get my butt in the kitchen and figure something that is easy and won’t cause too much guilt on my motherly conscious that makes me feel complete responsibility for the health and well-being of my family through the groceries I buy and meals I make. And here I am, making mashed potatoes out of a box, a can of chunky soup and hawaiian rolls. Tah-dah! That’s how I do homework.