Pandemonium, Parenting and the Pantry

I knew this day in our parenting would arrive eventually.
Two boys, 18 months apart, just old enough to scheme together effectively.
You can almost see the ideas brewing in their heads.
So far, they haven't tried anything too ridiculous. Mostly just helping each other get things down, or asking the other to ask us for something that the first one knows we'll say no to. You know, that kind of stuff.

That was until today.

It was a fantastic Monday morning. Warm(ish). Say, 40 degrees or something (which is downright tropical here). The sun was shining. My boys climbed into my bed around 6:30 to snuggle and try to convince me they should be able to play and I, studious mom, repeated for the 500th time that we don't get out of bed until its light out, which happens to be 7 am. So they sang and goofed around in my bed until 7 am. Then, as soon as I said go, they scampered off to play with Magna-tiles, Playstix, whatever. I saw them nestled in the play-space and announced that I needed a shower.

Now, mind you dear reader. This is usually when I break out the TV. We don't let them watch TV nearly at all. Like less than 1/2 hour a week. So on the rare day that I forget to take a shower in the evening and need to get one in the morning, I can count on zombie-ness from them for 15 glorious minutes to take a shower (exactly the length of one Daniel Tiger, thank you very much).

Today though, I actually didn't technically need a shower. I took one last night. But the thing is there is something wrong with my head these days. I have some weird issue with my eyes and they are soooo itchy all the time. Also, I frequently weep what I call "acid" tears. I'm not crying, its like my eyes are just draining and then, my lovely eye-lids get all puffy and folded looking. Its not exactly attractive. I can't figure it out and neither can my doctor (which is lame, I know).  Anyway though,we are getting off track. When I woke up today my eyes had been extra weepy/leaky over night and they felt all crusty and gross and they itched like crazy and all I wanted to do was just stand with my face right under the showerhead to let the water pound away the irritation. So it was sort of a bonus shower, or what have you.

Since I figured it would be short, I announced there would be no Daniel Tiger, that they should just keep playing with magna tiles and looking at books. They agreed. Ah, life was grand.

So, I got into the shower, stood there, probably for a bit too long letting the wonderful steamy shower fix my face and skin, enjoyed the lovely alone time and got out. Probably 20 minutes in total start to finish from seeing the boys to seeing the boys again.

Well, let me tell you what their 20 minutes looked like (I can only assume).

First, they played with Magna-tiles and books for 30 seconds. I'd say 30 seconds tops, because the disaster you are about to hear about must have taken the full 20 minutes to accomplish.

Then, one of them decided they were hungry, I'm sure. We have a rule in our house that you don't go in the pantry without an adult. To this rule they said in their little minds "%@# it. She's in the shower. She won't even know" (or whatever kids say to convince themselves to break the rule).
So in the pantry they went. The pantry probably looks like heaven to a 3 and 5 year old. All honeymaid and fruit-leather right in your face. And up on the second shelf is the coveted halloween candy bin (yes, I wrote halloween. Its probably more like valentines day, but whatever, it has (HAD) candy in it).
One of them thought out loud "Candy is the best breakfast! Lets get it down!"
To which Collin's little mind either continued to think, or agreed and promptly opened the stepping stool.
I hate that he can open the stepping stool. Damn fine motor and gross motor skills.
Enter the synergy known as devious brotherhood. I don't know how to explain it except that once one of them figures out the other has done something clever and funny, he starts laughing hysterically, which convinces the first that more of the action is warranted, and so on and so forth. I imagine this was the catalyst for many many broken and open bottles.

So here we are in the pantry. I'm sure that someone was STANDING on the counter and got down the candy box. I'm sure they comenced shoving every sucker or sweet thing they could find in their mouths at that very moment.
I would have just scolded them if I saw this alone. It wouldn't have been too bad.
But then, somewhere in the sugar-induced craziness, Collin, by self-insinuation, decided a food fight would be fun.

What on earth does a 5 year old know about a food fights? Seriously? How does this instinctively come to his mind as the equivalent of fun?

But whatever the case, there they are probably dancing on the counters with suckers in their mouths with no one to yell OH MY GOD GET DOWN YOU ARE GOING TO FALL AND CHOKE ON THAT THING! when one of them sees all the other fun things up there. Bottles of sauces, noodles, cornmeal, flour, loads of things you can OPEN, including TONS (17 bottles in total) of spices.
And so it began.
The great food fight of 2014. Never to be forgotten as long as I live.
During my 20 minute shower, my boys had glorious fun emptying:
2 full bottles of barbeque sauce
1 new bottle of soy sauce (even pulled off that annoying bottle cover!)
1 full bottle of ketchup (the giant size!)
2 FULL big morton salt containers (you know, the ones you use to refill your regular salt?)
6 of those GIANT spice containers from SAM's that you see in restaurants.  One full of F&^*ing peppercorns. Ugh!!! Peppercorns roll everywhere! I'll be finding them for 10 years at least. The others were dried basil, ground cumin, some canadian seasoning for steak, and something else I am forgetting.
Then three other seasoning jars- a season-all and a lawrys salt, both full, because you know, they didn't want to show any brand loyalty.
A whole host of half full spices- the extra smelly ones mostly. Garlic Salt YES. Onion Salt YES. Popcorn Cheesy salt (the bright orange kind!) YES. Garam Masala (to show their love of ethnic foods!) YES. The big bottles too. The nice glass ones from Target pantry.

Seriously.

They also helped themselves to a big tub of almonds (taking handfullls out with their barbeque covered hands), and some crackers to tie everything together.

Now this wouldn't be such a huge deal if they mixed it in a bowl or something. But NO that was clearly not a possibility. I mean, come on, that barbeque sauce is in a squeezy bottle for a reason. And from the second story here (standing on the counter) the trajectory is absolutely perfect to spray that shit EVERYWHERE. EVERY F@#%ing WHERE.
Also, if you pour ALL of those spice jars in a sort of pile on the floor from the second story counter top, it makes a sort of volcano pile that you can watch happen. I'm sure they did something like this. It also makes a lovely paste with all of your said spices that smells like Curry garlic soy HELL.

And so, I came out of my shower. It was really quiet. I said something like "boys where are you" and I heard Collin, from the bathroom downstairs say something like "Owen's making a really bad choice, but I'm washing my feet off in the bathroom, so its okay."

I went down stairs and cried a little bit. I YELLED. I YELLED like an abusive parent yells. It wasn't my proudest moment. I was totally dumbfounded that my boys could do this in 20 MINUTES. I lost my mind. It took everything I had in me to put myself on a little time out and not bruise their backsides so thoroughly that it hurt to sit.

I didn't lay a finger on them though. I took 5 minutes to self-regulate and pull my shit together. I took pictures so Drew could commiserate is solidarity. Someday these pics will be super funny. Today they are only a tiny bit funny.

Here it is, in all its glory. Imagine two boys dancing on the counter feet covered in all this shit, six suckers in each of their mouths and s giant smile on their faces. Ugh. The pictures are all blurry because I was so raging mad I couldn't hold the phone straight.


Just for comparison's sake, here's the pantry typically.

I had serious plans for today. We had lots to do. Those were over. I had to take a vacation day this consumed me so. I started cleaning about 7:40 and we ended around 11 am. It was THAT bad. They had foot prints everywhere. Walls were covered. There was barbeque sauce on the walls UNDERNEATH the cupboards. My curtains looked like someone had murdered a pile of pigs from the smoker. Every shelf had cumin on it, staining everything bright yellow. The bathroom, a nice white counter, where Collin tried to clean his hands and feet was destroyed with yellow stains. I mopped the floors FOUR times. I probably used 50 towels and we are now just finishing all the damn laundry at 11 pm.

Drew, bless his soul saw the text photos and came home. I'm pretty sure he thought I was going to kill our children (okay not really. But maybe duct tape them to the floor was probably a real possibility).
We cleaned and cleaned and cleaned and the kids didn't move two muscles. I made them sit silently and watch the clean up for three hours.
Yes, a three hour time out.
I didn't really plan it that way, but I couldn't take them to the shower until I was done cleaning for fear of tracking more crap through the house, and I sure as shit wasn't going to clean them up first so they could go play while I slaved away.
Maybe again, not my finest moment. Sorry boys. Momma is crazy.
They must have known I had lost it though, because they didn't move for the whole time.

Here's more evidence of their adventure:

(these are about 15 minutes into clean up, so imagine that sort of pile of spices everywhere!, also thats not blood on the curtains! Just soy sauce and BBQ!meh)




 Look almonds and tabasco! Everyone puts those together!

The lovely stepping stool. Every surface looked like that disaster when I started. I had already filled one garbage bag here with various empty containers. I didn't take a picture of the wall on the right, but it appears given my splatter-quality techniques for identification (a-la Dexter), it seems these boys squirted bbq and ketchup onto the floor and then it ricocheted off the floor onto the wall.
It was miserable.

We talked about it a lot later on. When everyone was normal again. I'm pretty sure they won't go in the pantry without an adult again. For the life of me I couldn't figure out how all of the behaviors in the chain of "fun" didn't alert Collin to think this is really BAD. We should stop. I didn't really expect that kind of thinking from Owen, but I did from Collin. I was so disappointed. When I asked him why on Earth he would do this, he really stuck to the "we wanted to have a food fight" thing. It was amazing to me. I couldn't process that answer to save my life. I just kept asking again.
He knew though it wasn't satisfying for me, because even though his answer didn't change, his promises did and so did his level of remorse.

"Momma, I feel really sad that we did that and it made you so angry." "Momma, I promise to be sooo good for the rest of the day." "Momma, how can I make you feel better?"

The boys is good at what we've taught him.

But I totally wasn't ready for any of that. I DID NOT GIVE A F#%. At one point he said something like "I'm hungry" and I said "I DO NOT CARE. you chose to eat all this crap today, so you won't be getting breakfast." He just sat quietly.

He continued to apologize though, which was nice of him. I continued to reject it, which was so CRAPPY of me. It took me leaving the house alone, really really cooling down and transitioning to something else for me really to be okay with it. I was so fired up.

Even though I yelled my face off at him and probably was a huge Ogre, he still wanted to play with me this afternoon, read books, and he wanted to help out. I love him so for his big forgiving heart.

At bedtime I apologized for yelling. I told him I love him like I always do. The same for Owen, who played along in this bit more emotionally, but following in the wings. Owen said, "its okay momma. Next time, don't yell so much. It hurts my ears."

Ugh. Parenting is hard.

My boys, even covered in barbeque sauce, cumin paste, soy and garlic are amazing though.
I'm a lucky momma.

On Being Vulnerable

Hello?
Is there anyone out there?
Seriously, sometimes I wonder who's actually reading this thing.

I'm sort of hoping its no one for this post. But it probably won't be. Murphy's law or whatever.

The past few months in our house have been stressful for us. Lots of changes. Things are sort in shake down mode. The biggest changes though are probably the ones I face independently. Which is weird to address on a public blogosphere-land page. But I'm doing it.

Why might you ask?

Because I'm try hard to be okay with vulnerability.
Vulnerability is tough for me.

I'm pretty type A. I don't like failure. I don't like giving up control. Perfectionist. List maker. Over-achiever. Annoyingly particular. Stubborn like a mule.
Thats me. Right here.

And because of those things there are moments in our life I don't put on the blog. There are days when we are miserable parents and days when the boys are driving me so crazy I think there must be something wrong with one of them, there are days when I burn the crap out of dinner, or create something that belongs as a headliner from craft-fail that looked just so lovely on Pinterest. There are epic fails in money management (oh F&(#!! How on early did that cost THAT much! We are broke AGAIN!), shitty date nights or lack there of, ruined laundry, broken furniture, etc. All of these things happen all the time, but generally I try to observe the "one in one out" and emphasize the positive. All about the positive because I really don't want the boys to dig around in the blog as young adult and see my vivid complaints of our life. Because even though its not all roses, I wouldn't change it for a moment. I love our family, being this wife, this momma, this bit of crazy.

Life is all about being a better you, though (read ME) and I know that I super suck at dealing with being vulnerable. So I'm working on it, courtesy of the great Brene Brown. I super love Brene Brown, but I have to work really hard at it. Daring Greatly is a really big adventure for me.

Anyway, so here's my first go at being vulnerable to the world and writing about something I typically would NEVER write about.

I'm applying for a new job (gasp).
Looking at the sentence looks pretty ridiculously tame on paper. New job? So what?
But here's the thing. In my whole life I've NEVER not gotten the job. Every single job I've applied to I've gotten or been recruited for. So, just a few weeks ago I decided to apply for tenure-track faculty position and this process is the first time that I could be not even in the same ballpark as the type of faculty member this search team wants. I have no way of knowing if I match their wants right now and its terrifying and a GIANT dose of being vulnerable. I'm totally in the waiting game of hearing if they are even interested in my application and its torture. Mostly because I am sitting in a moment where vulnerability means the potential for big life changes.

Tenure track is serious stuff. It means five years at least of busting my ass in ways I didn't know was possible to get tenure. It means publishing like a mad person (which is something I'm not so good at currently, so it also means growing this capacity first) -- you know what they say, publish or perish.
But it also means job security, flexibility post those five years,  amazing retirement and money in the bank. It means getting to work on what I want to work on and am passionate about and it means supporting graduate students to become doctorate level professionals. Its this balance of wanting something badly and not sharing about it for fear of failure which I've always avoided because it meant being vulnerable. Had I not written this post I would never have to explain if I don't get the job. I would never have to spend time perseverating on that failure.

BUT, it also means I wouldn't have the opportunity to be accepting of the support from family and friends if I fail and the experience to help me grow to create a reality in my work that I want-  to do the things that make a difference to me so that the lines between work and happiness blur.

So here's to being vulnerable.
Tiny steps, folks. Tiny steps.