The Funny and Not So Funny

Of course it's challenging being a single parent right now, but what I think is the most challenging is having four children who egg each other on. When I adopted Diamond and Florence I got instatwins with Sophia and Diamond. Florence is slightly older and more mature but not by much--so it's more like instatriplets. Giselle just runs along behind trying to get in on the mischief. Sophia and Giselle are by far the naughtiest, but when they suggest something, Florence and Diamond never hesitate to join in the fun. Since school let out, they have taken terrorism to a whole new level. I think they are bored and because of the incessant rain, unable to expend enough energy in healthy pursuits. Instead, they have resorted to tearing my house down.

Last Monday, I went out for two hours and put Oakley in charge. When I returned, Oakley's face was sucked into the television and he hadn't noticed what had transpired ten feet from him. Unbelievable! My house looked like the damage left by a tornado in a mobile home park. They had pulled a giant dresser over, spilling all the contents. Which I wasn't strong enough to lift by myself. Giselle had taken a hammer and put holes in the drywall of the laundry room. They had all climbed up to the top shelf of the food storage room and gotten into several boxes of Little Debbie snack cakes. They ate way too many to count and then smashed the rest into the floor. Then they opened three bags of chocolate chips and spread them all over the basement. They attempted to melt some in a bowl in the microwave and dip soda crackers in their impromptu fondue, however, it ended up smeared into the carpet and walls of the closet under the stairs. Oh, but that's not all! Thing 1, Thing 2, Thing 3, and Thing 4 took my photo albums and ripped out the pictures and spread them over the already chocolate chip covered floor, and then got all the blankets out and spread them over that to sit on. Then, they got out plastic gloves and filled them with water and squirted water all over the bathroom and then ripped up the plastic gloves and filled the sink and bathtub with them. When I saw the horror, I just started to cry. No amount of medication could help me blow this one off. I sent them all straight to bed and went up to my bedroom, pulled out a bag and stood there trying to talk myself out of running away. I did, obviously, but I came very close to moving to China and changing my name. The next day I made Oakley head up the disaster team clean up with the four little ones.

You would think that they would figure out that if they would quit making messes, they would have less to clean up and their mother would be happier, but not so. Two days later, I said, "If your chores are done, I'll take you to the pool." I thought since they had just cleaned up the previous disaster, the house would be easy to straighten. But, when I went to the basement, I found that Florence had packed all of her clothes in a purse and dumped them into the blanket closet. Then Diamond had pulled all 25 of the blankets down to make a house. Giselle and Sophia brought crackers and they all proceeded to grind those into the carpet. I was beside myself. I have spanked, I have done time outs, I have taken privileges, I have offered rewards. . . all to no avail. I loaded all four of them in the car and headed up Provo canyon to the running path. For forty five minutes I made them run. Whenever we came to a bench, they had to do squats and push ups. Every time one of them whined or complained, I yelled, "If you have energy to trash my house, you have energy to run. Now, MOVE IT!" I'm not sure if it has gotten the point across entirely because they still make messes, but not to the point of needing a HazMat crew.

Yesterday, I found that they had gotten into my jewlery case and my wedding ring was missing. I don't usually wear my wedding ring because the marquee diamond doubles as a dangerous weapon at times. However, it was the ring Brian picked out for me and gave to me the night he proposed on the front of Mt. Timpanogas. Anyway, sure enough, either Florence, Diamond, or Giselle made off with the ring (the story varies every time I hear it), and it's no where to be found. I cried for an hour until my cheeks stung from the tears. Then I realized, it's just stuff. It can't go with me when I die. It doesn't change how I feel about my husband. It's not worth killing my children over. It's just one of those things that happens in this thing called life. At least I wasn't sentenced to 12 years hard labor in North Korea, right?

So, yes, the kids exhaust me to no end, but I wouldn't trade any of them. In fact, they have their moments of absolute hilarity and I realize that my life would be so incomplete without them. So here are a few of the funny stories lately.

*The neighbor told me that he had noticed Giselle playing naked in the garage. (This happens all the time. She's a nudist at heart.) Sophia, apparently, yelled at her to go get dressed. He said he saw Giselle grab a black garbage bag and pull it over her head until it was a poncho, and then proceeded to run and play with the other kids, clad in black plastic. I can only imagine what the neighbors think of us!

*Diamond got out of the shower and while he was waiting his turn to be "greased" he put on my high heeled shoes. I started to laugh. I said, Diamond, I'm going to take a picture of you like that and show it to your girlfriends when you're 16, and your girlfriends will laugh at you. He answered, without even so much as a smile, "They won't laugh at me, because I have skills, Karate skills." Good thinking, Napoleon Dynamite!

*Florence and Diamond were playing with one of my dance students, Mike, who came over to our house. Each one had sat on one of his feet. Florence looked up at him and said, "Hey, look, you have two black shoes." I don't even know what to say to that.

*Diamond loves meat. I think I need to say that again. He LOVES meat! So, the other night at my dad's birthday party, grandpa gave Diamond a hot dog and then asked what he wanted on it. To which he responded, "chicken." Then sprinkle it with bacon bits and dowse it in some hamburger gravy maybe?

*The other day when Giselle wouldn't put underwear over her clothes to be a super hero like Diamond, he yelled, "That's it! We're going to go get a little sister who's AWESOME!"

*Chloe came up and sat next to me and in a somber voice said, "Mom, there's a few things that I'd like to put in my death treaty." I couldn't stop laughing. "You're trying to make peace with death? Aren't we all!" I answered. "I mean my will, mom, stop laughing and don't tell anyone I said that." You know your mom too well, baby!

*I took the kids on a walk to Grandma's house and as we were returning, Diamond called out, "Mom, I have a porcupine in my pants. Sophia, do you want to feel the porcupine in my pants?" My eyes got really big and I felt this twinge of nervousness run through me and then I looked down at Diamond's pants and saw the porcupine. He had walked through a field of tall grass and the stickers were poking through his pants, scratching his legs. I was so relieved that that was what he was talking about. I'm not ready for anything else!!


Because I am obviously bordering on the edge of crazy most days, I have at my moments of funny myself. The other day I was vacuuming the house and I noticed that the brush wasn't revolving like it should. I assumed the kids had burnt out the rubber band so I headed down to Walmart to get a new one. I looked and looked and couldn't find the right one. So I came home and began to take the vacuum apart to figure out how to fix it, when I noticed that the knob was turned to tools instead of carpet. I had just spent three hours of my day fixing a NOT broken vacuum. I love how independent I've become with Brian gone!

I took my sister in law, Alicia, out on a date with me because I really needed a break from the kids and to go have fun. We went to Salt Lake for Thai food--which was fabulous, and then we walked around downtown and went shopping. At one store we found these hideous 80's prom dresses that we decided to try on. The funny part was that the dresses (I picked the bright orange with polkadots, and she chose the black polkadot dress with tulle), were the same length. The problem is that I'm 5'6" and Alicia is 6'2". So what would be normal on me looked like a french maid costume on her. After shopping, we ran through this fountain that sporadically shoots up. The rule was you had to run straight and you couldn't purposely avoid the streams of water. Well, I got a stream straight up my shirt and where my cleavage used to be. Alicia got a stream that went straight up her nose. She didn't find the activity very amusing after that, but I haven't laughed that hard in years. We then spent a half an hour wandering around downtown Salt Lake in the dark, rainy night because we couldn't remember where we parked. By the time we got back to the car, we were soaked and laughing hysterically. It was exactly what I needed, to let my crazy come out in immature, carefree ways. Thanks, Alicia!