safety sissors, college, and the eiffel tower

hello again.  so soon.
today i am going to compose a post that will most likely be, for some,
a breath of fresh air.
for others,
it may be rather shocking.
howsoever that may be,
i'll just write,
and let the chips fall where they may.

mornings and i are not super friends.
we've not really had a chance to get properly aquainted, you see,
because we are always joined by other people.
people who are small and loud.
did you ever notice that noise is magnified first thing in the morning?
like a quarrel, or a demand for milk, or a door slamming?  sooooo loud!
(maybe i should wear earmuffs for the first hour i'm up and around. hmmm...)

anyway, i would rather stay up well into the night, and then sleep until,
say 8 or 9.  but the small, loud people, they have forced me to adapt to a routine that fits their schedule better.  so it goes without saying that i'm not always miss sunshine first thing in the morning.  it's not even light outside,
and i am supposed to rouse my slumbering daughter for school?  she also does not like mornings so she fights me every step of the way.  if you were a mouse in our house, peeping through a hole in the bedroom wall, this is what you'd see.  (well, technically, if you were a mouse in our house, you'd be dead.  we have three cats who live in our basement and they kill an outrageous amount of mice.  but you know what i mean...)

so i trudge over to cassie's bed, (she's 10 now, but we've been doing this faithfully for 5 years.) and i poke her, and mutter,
"cassie.  get up.  it's morning."
she grunts and rolls away from me.
i nudge her with more umph, and hiss,
"CASS, get up!!"
she groans, "i don't want to get up. i'm still tired."
and i say through clenched teeth,
"do NOT wake your sisters!  i mean it!!"  (and i do mean it!)
then she does one of two things.
either she goes ahead and talks outloud...i'm convinced she does it on purpose to wake above mentioned sisters,
or she completely ignores me altogether and goes back into her deep slumber.
then i have no choice but to start shaking the mattress, or her. 
confession: i have, on at least one occasion, balled my hand into a fist and pounded her on the butt.  (as a last resort, of course.)

i am sure it will come as no surprise to you, when i tell you she much prefers her father to wake her for school.  he likes mornings. he goes to her bed and gently tells her to get up, and if he can't rouse her, he just scoops her up, blanket and all, and carries her down stairs.  how can i even compete with that??? 
he doesn't do that for me.  i'm just saying.

once miss cassie is out the door and off to school, the other two little misses and i get on with the day.  sometimes they ask to watch pbs kids for a bit, and i say yes. 
this morning was such a morning.
they were watching clifford, and i looked at the clock and saw that there was a good 20 minutes left before it was over.
i remembered how delicious my bed had felt, and i padded up the stairs and crawled back in.  not to sleep, of course, but just to rest in the quietness of my room for a blessed 20 minutes.  i rarely allow myself this little luxury.  i lay there, pondering the possibility of taking my three year old, cheney, for her pictures. i was wondering if i was up for torturing myself or not.

ten minutes later, i heard my 3 year old calling for me.  she was saying something about wanting to cut my hair.  i stayed quiet.  i heard her say,
"mommy, where IS you!?" 
she found me in my bed, shortly thereafter.
in her hand was a safety sissors.
she again stated that she wanted to cut my hair.  and i realized, promptly, that she must have enjoyed cutting her own hair so much that now she wanted to cut mine.

her bangs were gone.  the butchered look.
like hunks gone.  ohhh what a bad sight.  but she is my third child, and not the first one to take a sissors to the scalp, so i just sighed, and got out of bed, and decided pictures will need to wait a month or so. 

a bit later i told her in a firm tone that she must not cut her hair again.
her reply was an emphatic,
"yes i IS going to cut my hair again!  because i BIGGER!!"
when i would not change my mind, she said,
"you mean now.  i want another one mommy!"
(she always follows the word another with the word one.)
so she went on to tell me who she wanted for her new mommy, and when i told her that i thought if she went to live somewhere else she would miss me,
she got a strange expression on her face.  and she said,
"stop lookin' at me!"  so.  what can i say?  she is a girl who knows what she is thinking and feeling.  and, she is not afraid to verbalize it.

i realize how much i've changed over the years of mothering.
i over reacted something terrible with my first born child.  poor cassie.  no wonder she's so intense!
when cassie was three, she asked someone why their hiney was so big.
no joke.  it was...there are no words.  i covered her mouth and wisked her away before she could embarrass me farther.
now with cheney,
she just told my mom the other day,
"your body is stinky.  i don't like you.  and i not want you to come to my house!"
to which i replyed, calmly, "mom, she's three.  please don't mind her." 
i just learned that freakouts do not help, and i guess i am less concerned about how people veiw me as a mother.  i have stopped trying to impress people with my well behaved kids.  there.  i said it.
we do that, as moms, you know.

(if you look closely at this picture of cheney, you will notice that she is indeed the third child.  she dressed herself.  shirt is backwards. fly is open. and pay special attention to her footwear. classy! and of course none of you can see this, but take my word for it.  her underware are on inside out AND backwards.)

and moms also have this thing were they act like motherhood is just the most divine thing they ever experienced.  they get all sappy when they talk about their babies growing up, and how they want to freeze them at this age.  i just listen, and smile, but i'm thinking,
"are you NUTS???  you want to do this till you DIE?  seriously?"
i mean i have great moments with my kids too, but...

and then there are all those conversations about how parents dread the day their kids will go off to college. (i'm thinking of starting to pack cassie's bags any day now.  i mean she's 10.  why wait till the last minute??)
or the dad stories about how they cry just thinking of giving their girls away?
clint and i have considered putting a sign out by the road,
3 daughters. available for marraige to christian boys. apply within.

and yes.  i am laughing.
and yes.  i do have a heart!
and yes.  i do love my girls.

but that dosn't mean i do not think about the day when i can stay in bed and just relax with a book.  or take an uninterupted bubble bath.  or listen to MY music and watch MY movies.  or think.
infact, i dream about those days sometimes.
now i know that paul said he learned that whatever state he found himself in to be content...blah blah blah...

and not meaning any disrespect to paul, of course, but he was never a mom.
you know what i'm saying??
now i know he was in prison, and blah blah...
but sometimes i wonder if a cell with a cot and a book, with my meals served to me, would be all that horrible.

and YES!  i'm kidding.  mostly. (smile.)

when my girls are bigger, and can get on without me for a while, i plan to go abroad.  to paris, definately...but other places too.
i want to see the world.  drink coffee by the eiffel tower.
and in my dream, my children are far away.  and unless he develops a passionate love of traveling...so is their father. (smile)  don't worry.  he already knows he's not invited to go along with me to paris.  i think he is relieved.  i'll bring them gifts.  (i'm thoughtful that way.) 

what i'm saying, girls, is that i think it's ok...even MORE than ok, to admit that things are not perfect.  and we're not perfect.  that when pressed, we will pound our kids on the butt to wake them up for school. 

these masks we wear...
they just make us weary.
and who do we really think we are kidding, anyway?
i took mine off.
it's a relief.
i can breath more easily.
and the fresh air is glorious.

i say,
let's keep it real.



p.s. yes. i know that when all my daughters have left my house, i might miss them.  and wish they'd come back.  maybe even wish they were little again.  but that is just because i will have forgotten what it was really like.  :)