the sleppys

I was telling a mother of two girls that Ty went to a boy’s birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. At three years old, he clung to Dad’s arm for an hour before he sat by himself in the booth. The other children ran around and played. He was still, quiet, observant, and no more than four inches away from Dad the entire time.

“Wait until he gets to the real world!” exclaimed she.

A young public schooled boy asked me why I home school our children. He mentioned that his school was a good school. He also talked about a family who lives on his No Outlet street with five children who are home schooled. Without waiting for my response, he said, “The mom does that because she’s afraid of the world.”

“Oh, is she?” I wondered where he got such an idea.

“Yea, and her kids are never allowed to come over.”

I didn’t answer the boys original question because he obviously didn’t want to hear it and because I didn’t want to get into topics such as parental influence, abdication of responsibilities, and low quality government workers with a nine year old boy.

On a Teacher Work Day, Dear Husband was at Target when he overheard a mother’s telling her children, “This is why I shop while you are at school, so I don’t have to put up with your misbehavior.”

Yet… our children give a proper greeting, hold open the door, give the right of way to elders. When prompted, they give up their seat for others. They sit quietly at the bank, and stand in single file when I’m shopping. They are children who forget where they are sometimes, so every once in a while, I have to call attention to them while in public.

Do we not ALL live in the real world? A successful bachelor banker doesn’t live the life that a single mother of two who is on the dole lives, but they both live in the real world. What exactly do people mean when they mention “the real world”? If it means gangs, drug pushers, and people of questionable values, the sexual education of young children, loud music, video games, and high fructose corn syrup, then, by the power invested in us by God Himself, we will strike it down with our flaming swords!

But it is all in how we treat people and to what we are accustomed. Ty’s clinging to his father for an hour is a representation of how we chose to live, where we chose to go on our free times… the library, the park, the wilderness, places that harbor mostly quiet (the real world). When Taylor accompanies me to my trips to the fabric store, she stays close to me, on the right side of the walkway, with her voice down, exhibiting behavior that is lacking from other four year olds. She’ll get a little shriek in her voice when she sees a pink, glittery fabric that would be perfect for a tutu. In our “real world,” Kyle greets the grocery store’s security guard and cashiers with a hearty “Good Morning” and stands aside when a stock clerk has to make his way down an aisle while pushing a filled cart.

We, Sleppys, are not afraid of the real world. School cannot be counted on to do what is clearly a parent’s responsibility, which is to teach a child how to treat others. NOT EVEN CHURCH will teach them that. We, Sleppys, already live in the real world, day after day, guiding, teaching, encouraging, witnessing to, sacrificing for, correcting, and molding our young breed.

Just you wait until *your* children get to the “real world.” Wait to see how shunned they’ll be, classified as rude, crass, grotesque, tasteless, loud.

(Aside, Talon loves wearing her brothers and sisters’ boots. They are so big on her, so she stomps around the house, looking like Link in Iron Boots. Totally adorable.)

The babies are eating more and more kinds of food. Now that they are nine months old, they can tolerate new foods better than when they were four months old. When they did turn four months, a lot of moms were telling me that I can start feeding them regular food. Food at four months? That’s crazy to me. With our first child, we followed what the books (Doctor Spock, Babywise, et cetera) were preaching to us. But trying to feed a four month old who can barely sit up and is continuing to make a mess with his sloppy food was frustrating. “Give it time. He’ll get used to it.” More crazy talk. So with our second, I waited until he was six months to feed him. It was easier, but I still did not feel that I was doing the very best for him. One mom told me that she exclusively breastfed her baby until the baby was almost one year old. “Can babies survive on breastmilk for one year?” Well, God made my mammary glands to make the milk that provides nutrition. This nurse-for-a-year concept didn’t seem as ridiculous as giving a baby slop at four months. It was like being taught a strategy and slapping one’s own forehead for not realizing the simplicity! I took our third baby to work with me for ten months, and she nursed exclusively because we were attached to the hip, which is where babies are supposed to be: attached to their mother. I know that it’s nearly impossible for a modern mother to be with her baby 24 hours a day, seven days a week for the first 45 weeks, but we made it happen.

So at nine months, both babies can confidently sit up and tolerate new foods. This morning, I mixed in two table spoons of cow’s milk into their cereal, which is barley and breastmilk. They didn’t seem to notice the change in taste, and two hours later, they are not looking like they’ve reacted with allergy. I think we should try goat’s milk because it is supposed to have a composition similar to breastmilk.

A few nights ago, Dad made a delicious soup with white beans, pork, onions, celery, and carrots. I mixed their cereal not with breastmilk but with the stock. The cereal disappeared from the bowl faster than you can say, “Bob’s yer uncle.” They liked the taste of taste! Not that they think that breastmilk is bland, but it kicked the jarred Garbar junk in the derriere.

I’m aware that some might think that I am being over-protective about the babies’ intestinal flora. If I had the choice of being over-protective or unaware, I’d chose the former. There was a police officer who made the news recently for going out of his way to save a choking two-year-old girl. The girl was feverish, so her mother gave her meat. Meat. With a fever! When my children have fevers, they get breastmilk, even if they are two years old.

I have to admit that I wasn’t exactly “happy” when I learned that we were expecting twins. I was shocked, scared, and confused (Twins don’t run in my family). After getting over the initial reaction, expecting twins is a little more serious that expecting a singleton. It is a blessing and much, much more efficient than having only one at a time.

When people, most often it’s women, learn that we’re having twins, their first response is usually, “Gosh, I’ve always wanted twins.” That makes me feel a little guilty because I’ve never always wanted twins. I’ve always wanted to have children. There was a time that I didn’t want *any* children. Then there was a time that I thought I’d never have children. When I did want children, I never wanted twins. It didn’t occur to me that I’d ever have twins, being that they don’t run in my family.

I’ve always associated twins as a mother-to-daughter trait or an outcome of fertility treatments. And I learned recently that there are twins in my family, but they come from my dad’s side. My paternal grandfather was himself a twin born in 1899 – or 1898, I’m not sure. But in my grandfather’s case, like in Elvis Presley’s, one twin survived while the other didn’t (Elvis’ twin was named Jesse).

I don’t entirely believe that having twins is a genetic trait. Surely, it must have something to do with maternal nutrition. Most other mammals have larger litters if overfed. We’ve been having stair-step children, so perhaps my body thinks that there’s a human population shortage. Or maybe the gods find it amusing that we’ll have five children ages five and under. Ha ha ha. That’s funny.

Then there are comments such as, “Twins always come early,” “You can’t breast feed two babies!” and “Doctors like to schedule a C-section just in case.” I don’t know about you, but my babies are going to be born only a few days before their actual due date after four hours of labor. They’ll be weighing over seven pounds each, and they’ll learn to nurse together, dirty their diapers together, and sleep together because that’s just the way things are going to be in this house. Period.
All I know is, I get really uncomfortable being told that someone else has “always wanted twins.” That’s like being asked, “Are you expecting?” when you’ve had a baby just three months before. Or carrying a bag of groceries in one hand and holding the hand of a toddler who is holding the hand of a young preschooler who is holding the hand of an older preschooler and being told, “Looks like you’ve got your hands full.” Well, it might only look like that, but if I let go of the toddler, her brothers still have a hold of her.

And my favorite: “Better you than me!”
You. Are. Right.

Dear Giant Inflatable Snow Globe Owner,

I admire your festive sense. While the majority of the neighborhood waits timidly aside for the arrival of Christmas, you decorate your yard with an enormous, plastic, 100 volt round thing that reminds passersby that it’s not Christmas without snow. At night, while I drive past hundreds of unlit houses, your yard is like a beacon of blowing snow, guiding me through the dark streets, a whirring motor that serves as a fog horn.

Did you know that you spent one hundred dollars on an eye sore? It’s a good thing that you want to celebrate the season. Can you do it without the fake snow? Without the plastic snowman? It’s like you have put a round blender on your lawn and chopped up a trash bag inside. Perhaps you can put that thing in your backyard where only the people who are living with you can see it. Your closest neighbors might be insulted by the motor’s ruckus, so maybe you should just get rid of it.

Thanks and Merry Holidays,

Mom

After an open palm’s worth in years of marriage, we still have and use most of our wedding gifts. The fitted sheets don’t fit our bed, for we acquired a larger bed. And the kettle that my brother’s mother-in-law gave us has rusted inside, so I painted it, style Americana. It decorates the top of the bookshelf. The Henckels 45-piece flatware set that my sister-in-law gave us has partially survived the five years of marriage, children, pet ownership, moving, and incorporating businesses. Partially for a few reasons:

Ty threw away two teaspoons. He was a little over a year old, and at his height, the garbage can will seduce anyone into opening it and putting stuff inside. Kyle threw away one teaspoon and one salad fork. I told him not to eat with salad forks, and he interpreted that salad forks were garbage. Of course, I dug out the pieces that I could find, but when my back is turned, hey, my back is turned.

A tablespoon was tossed into the rich foliage of our cottage in South Miami. I’m not blaming Isis, but that was the price to let her over the threshold. When we moved, we took account of what was missing and found that we had lost another salad fork and another tablespoon. Several months later, a knife was caught in the garbage disposal, but we managed to save it. Albeit, it warped, so that counts for the business incorporation.

The only utensils that are all accounted for are the dinner forks, the ones that only the adults are allowed to use. That’s probably why we still have all eight!

One-half decade of conversation, changing diapers, crunching numbers, wiping spills, and sporadic sleeping has a low cost of three teaspoons, two salad forks, one tablespoon, and one knife. I think it’s worth it.

There was a full moon on May 2. There will be a full moon on May 31. Because two full moons will occur in the same month, the second full moon is called a blue moon. So whatever you do “once in a blue moon,” do it on May 31… like talk to your best friend from high school or exercise.

We had big plans for May Day that included a visit to the park, flower collecting, May beetle research, and working on Ty’s book (he’s writing a book). But God laughs when I make plans.

I woke up to let Isis outside, and she walked into the screened patio and through one of the panels. Yes, she walked through one of the panels. Of course, it had been ripped off! I told the kids, as they were waking, to keep the doors closed (we usually have them open as we do not run the air conditioning) until we fix the screen. But Dad thought that it would be a better idea to let the air (my ears heard “mosquitoes”) in. Okay, we have to fix the screen today. So I ripped off the rest of the panel to figure how it was put together as I’ve never put together screen and spline before. I took measurements and piled the kids in the car to head to The Home Depot. But I forgot the spline. I got the wrong size of spline (I eyeballed it), so I couldn’t put the screen up before I went to work.

Even with the right sized spline I wouldn’t have been able to put the screen up as one side of the panel had spline that had dry rotted in the groove, so it was next to impossible to rip it out. I used a screwdriver, the pointed end of a can opener, and eventually knitting needles to scrape it out. But that didn’t get done until this morning. That particular task took more than an hour. After that, it was easy breezy.

I didn’t know what I was doing at first – but everybody feels that way when doing something new. I got some wrinkles in the beginning and ended up doing each side twice to smooth the wrinkles out, but it looks good now!

No May poles. No May flowers. No May baskets nor May bettles this May Day. Only the work of American hands that preserves and strengthens the great heritage of liberty, justice and equality under law which our forefathers bequeathed to us.

Happy Loyalty* Day!

*As per Public Law 85-529 passed by Congress in 1958, Loyalty Day falls annually on May 1 for the reaffirmation of loyalty to the United States and for the recognition of the heritage of American freedom.

You’d think that I would have posted at least half a dozen times since getting our new iBook laptops. But no. I’ve been looking up new crafts and ideas for our homeschool. I finished a basket that I made out of Virginia Creeper. Ty ate a pound of strawberries out of the basket, lined with a paisley-print cloth napkin. Very 19th-century Scotland. And we have been spelling (typing) and reading words that we use everyday: red, dog, car, snow, rainbow, please, and thank you. Ty typed his whole name and the seven colors of the rainbow.

Kyle isn’t interested in homeschooling through the iBook and prefers to yell the colors and numbers that he knows. As we have been potty training him, he now knows to pull his pants down to pee, but it rarely happens in front of the toilet. He likes to pee in the back patio, in the bushes, in the tub, on the compost pile. Oh well, as long as he’s not going in his pants in the middle of the produce section, I’m pleased with his progress, And he’s been going on and on for a couple of weeks now about his birthday. “Today is my birthday.” No, Kyle, not yet.

Taylor climbed on top of the sink and opened the medicine cabinet, which has only toothbrushes in it because I know that kids will climb up and open the medicine cabinet, but I didn’t think that it would be Taylor. Let’s keep the bathroom door closed, okay? Thanks. She also dances. She spins around as she has seen me do many times, albeit she’s never seen me land on my butt. I bump into walls. And she stands, bounces, and sways when she hears music or anything that may sound like music.

On Friday, Dad had to take my car to work. He offered to let us drop him off so that we wouldn’t be car-less, but really, I had a long list of to-do’s and not having a car wasn’t going to affect my mopping and washing. Before he left, Dad expressed that he was going to be hungry when arriving home and that he would like to have the rest of the turkey slices to make a sandwich. No problem. Hey, kids, don’t eat Daddy’s turkey. An hour after he left, I got into sweeping and mopping, and the kids were really good, really quiet. Too quiet. And any parent knows that a quiet kid is either asleep or doing something wrong. I walk outside and see Kyle’s sharing the turkey slices as if it were his own. I screamed, I cried, “Don’t eat daddy’s food!” omg. What to do. What to do!

Okay, so I dressed them up and told them that they were going to be punished. We walked (Taylor rode in the stroller) a mile and a half to the grocery store to pick up turkey slices. For the first few blocks, we had a good pace, but by the time we got the point of no return, the boys were tired. Oh well, we were more than half-way to the store. We took a mild shortcut when we got to the plaza. I piled them all into a grocery cart that I found in the parking lot. Being the only one walking helps the pace. Ty is a pretty quick walker, good at keeping up, but he was tired. I gave them only that break, and as we left the store, they also got out of the cart. And we walked back home another mile and a half. By this time, Kyle was to the point of crying, knowing that we had food but couldn’t eat it. “That’s too bad. You shouldn’t have eaten Daddy’s food. Now we have to walk home.”

And we made it home, had some sandwiches and left a few slices for Daddy’s turkey.

I’m in the kitchen. The kids are in their room. I hear:
“Gimme my book, Kyle!”
“No!”
“Gimme it!”
“No!”
[thump]
“Ahhh! Mommmy waaahhhhhh”

I leave the kitchen to see wth. Kyle comes out of the room and walks toward me.
“One two three four five. Stay alert. Stay alive,” I chant while rubbing his arm.
“Kanks.”

“Ty, come here please.”
Smiling, “Yes?”
“Did you hit Kyle?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not allowed to hit people. Do you like it when Kyle hits you?”
[long pause]
I ask again, “Do you like it wh-”
“Yes, I do like it.”

I try my darndest to maintain a straight face, but he sees right through me. Laughing, he runs to his room. Kyle hangs out in the kitchen with me while I finish washing dishes.

I am completely muddled by the child-rearing process.

I’m not much into the helmet laws. In fact, I oppose them. (Great advice, eh?) Though, obviously, one ought to protect his head when engaging in death-defying stunts, id est, combat, mining, bee-keeping. But should a kid really need to be wearing his helmet when he’s learning to balance on his bike? I mean, really. Shouldn’t a parent be by his side, encouraging him to focus on what he’s doing and start slowly? A helmet is a hinderance in that situation. Might as well stick a goalie mask to him… along with a jock strap, a cup, and a pair of falconry gloves… JUST IN CASE! Naturally, every kid suffers bumps and bruises when he’s learning to mobalize himself. He’s got to learn to move and not bump into things. That’s what human beings do. They’re born not knowing. They adapt. They survive long enough to make more humans.

That said, a few evenings after Christmas, I went to let the dog and kids run around in the front yard. Ty wanted to ride his trike. Kyle sat on his scooter. So we went around the cul-de-sac (is there an English or American word for that?) and saw a kid, a little younger than Ty, riding his new Power Wheels truck. His dad was jogging around the dead-end street, trying to keep up with the child. The kid got distracted by us, and kept looking at us while the monster under him kept going forward. His dad, who was running after him but still 30 feet behind, yelled, “Watch where you’re going!” And I tried telling him that, too. But it was too late. The anticipation of his hitting the curb was unbearable. I was afraid that his head would bounce right onto the sidewalk, but he hung tightly to the monster’s handles. Only his butt went airborne, while his neck hit the front panel (he turned his face and held his head up so as not to let it hit). The dad shook his head in relief that his kid didn’t do a faceplant, and they went off toward the intersection – of all places.

Like I mentioned, I’m not one for helmets, but when engaging in death-defying stunts, please wear one. And if you’re going to let your three and a half year old kid ride faster than he can run, especially on a motorized vehicle that you are not conducting, please stick a goalie mask to him along with a jock strap, a cup, and a set of leathers. Who cares if he looks like Jason/Marlon Brando? He’ll at least grow up to give you grandchilren.