Everytime I am on the phone...

Every time I answer a phone call,  it's basically a get out of jail free card for my kids.  All bad behavior becomes untouchable, uncontrollable, and unavoidable. This post is about how I handle my children when on the phone.  Imagine a living room devoid of furniture and littered with toys.  It's the witching hour.  Personalities are starting to intensify, no one likes each other right now as we wait impatiently for dinner...the phone rings...like an idiot, I answer it. Let the games begin.

Now that I am distracted, Sedric's pent up man energy gets the best of him, he attacks Rafe.  She falls to the floor with Sedric wrapped around her torso like a sarong.  He bumps his chin on her shoulder in the kerfuffle...its his fault, but he pulls Rafe's hair for punishment for making him (his perspective) bump his chin while he pummeled her and sent her to the ground like a felled tree.  
Rafe is enraged and using her zombie Apocalypse shriek to make her displeasure known.
I have been on the phone for 60 sec at this point and I already have forgotten who I am talking to and from which I deduct: there will be no meaningfully expressed words coming from my end of the conversation today, just randomly muttered "uh-huh's" at any pause in the conversation as I dodge the dead spots in our suburban home while my children evoke each other to murderous rage and mischief.
The kids are in crisis mode.  They begin hoarding food from the pantry.  Sedric has climbed to top cupboard shelves and is liberating the fruit snacks and gold fish.  Our kitchen is raining snack food.  The girls are dancing and singing Sedric's praises below as food adorns their Afros.  I'm running between the living room where the baby is laying on the floor in a sea of toys and the kitchen where the older kids are acting like desert island survivors.  I storm into the kitchen flailing my free arm snapping my fingers and posturing my displeasure with a savage stink eye trying not to interrupt the person (I still can't remember their name) on the phone.  The children scatter...or do they?  I walk back to the living room feeling powerful and in control and naively think I may be able to salvage this conversation after all...NAIVE.  All is quiet...not a good sign.  I get back up off the floor where I am playing with the baby and walk back into the kitchen...the pantry doors are open.  The fruit snacks are missing.  The gold fish are missing...CRAP.  Luck for me, my kids aren't good at covering their tracks yet...I follow the trail of fallen crushed food to the family room where they are sitting behind the couch in the window laughing at their completed caper.  They are munching loudly.  I appear very unexpectedly over the back of the couch.  The children are taken aback.  They are now choking and crying from displeasure and surprise as I rip the snack boxes out of their grubby little hands and throw them back into the pantry.  They are really upset now...hind sight, I should have just fed them and turned the TV on...but, like an idiot, I didn't. 
Peniel begins asking me questions I can't answer for obvious reasons:  I AM ON THE PHONE. She wants to know when we can go to the store to buy ingredients to make perfume and the go to Home Depo to buy metal to make a perfume making machine...I keep shaking my head at her as if to say, "I have no idea!"  She is getting frustrated with me and storms off to gather her thoughts before coming back to assault me with them.  The baby is now beginning to fuss so I pick her up and bounce her.  It's not helping.  I begin to scour the floor with my feet in search of her binky...no luck, so I bounce her faster, she burps and spits up down my shirt and all over the carpet...CRAP.  I have completely forgotten at this point that I am on the phone with someone...I mumble, "dang it!"  under my breath as I accidentally step in the puddle of spit up.  I almost drop the phone in surprise when I hear a concerned person in my ear ask, "is everything ok over there?"  What?  Is that you God?  I lie and say, "Of course everything is fine!  Now, what were you saying?"  The uh-huh conversation resumes.  The baby is demanding her dinner by violently grabbing my shirt and head butting me in the chest...subtle as a train wreck.  Peniel returns.  She has something to say.  She begins telling me how I lied to her last year when I told her I would buy her a canvas so she could paint, and she still didn't have one so I have ruined her dream of being an artist...AND ruined her dream of being a perfume maker...I think she had a picture of herself in her head as a scientist in a white lab coat, wearing goggles brewing and pouring concoctions into a sea of beakers with one hand and painting pictures of horses with her other hand...and I was ruining it all!  I whisper to her, "I'll help you become famous later...but not right now, I'M ON THE PHONE."  Sedric and Rafe paddle into the room and collapse on the floor complaining about wanting dinner.  The room is getting too loud but there is no where to go BECAUSE THEY WILL JUST FOLLOW ME and there are too many dead spots in the quieter places in our home, it's all working against me...the baby is soaking my shirt with baby slime growling at me for her dinner, Peniel is still recounting her grievances, and Sedric and Rafe are whining...and the person on the phone is still nameless!  OY VEY.  I interrupt the nameless person on the phone to express my apologies for being distracted during our conversation only to realize I had stepped into the dead zone and lost the call...CRAP.  The kicker is, I still couldn't remember who I was talking to so I could call them back!!  Oh well, I tried.  I put down the phone in defeat, shake my head and sigh, all the while I am thinking, "I promise to never again answer the phone while the kids are awake." 

5 most embarrassing interactions with new neighbors

This post is about 2 weeks late due to some DIY projects I've had going... BUT, I FINALLY FINISHED IT, SO ENJOY!!  And please vote for my blog by clicking the Top Mommy Blog link on my sidebar!  I truly appreciate it! 

We have lived in our new house about 2 weeks now...in one day, my kids have embarrassed me about 2 years worth in one 20 minute conversation with 2 of our new neighbors...here is what they said...in list format...least embarrassing to most embarrassing:

1)  While talking to the neighbor, Sedric decided to be funny and break out his "potty" humor.  He started laughing when the neighbor asked him what he was thinking about, he responded,  more quickly than I could remind him of his manners, "I want to poop on your fence."  SPEECHLESS.

2)  While talking to the neighbor who is holding her tiny infant baby girl, Rafe asks the neighbor in a very matter of fact kind of way, "I want to see her baby boobs."  SPEECHLESS.

3)  Peniel see's the neighbor out in her yard, she starts waving at her.  The neighbor waves back and smiles.  Peniel marches over to the fence and yells in all her first born glory, "Hey!  Your yard is a mess!  You should clean it!"  SPEECHLESS.

4)  While talking to the neighbor with the infant, Peniel declares, "Babies are so cute!  I'M definitely gonna have a baby when I am 17!"  SPEECHLESS. 

And lastly, the most embarrassing interaction in this 20 minute embarrassment gauntlet:

5)  While I was introducing myself and my kids to another neighbor we just met 5 minutes prior, Peniel chimes into the conversation with this little gem of a comment, "yeah, my mom doesn't like it when we disobey, she takes our toys away from us, and our dessert, AND tells us we have to sleep in the garage!"  SPEECHLESS.

 Just for the record, my kids have never slept in the garage or been threatened with sleeping in the garage...she pulled that out of left field, I think she enjoys shocking people with outlandish faulsehoods, anyways...the look on the neighbor's face seemed to say, "there goes the neighborhood." I am now afraid to meet any of the other neighbors for fear of complete social ruin...I have a feeling we might be becoming "that family" in the neighborhood that everyone talks about with raised eyebrows...thanks kids.  Thanks a lot.   I can just hear the whispers now...did you hear those kids in that white house the other day?  Are they raising wild animals in there?  Do thy ever stop fighting?  She needs to close her windows when they are screaming, the noise is bothering my designer dog."

Coincidentally, I have not seen nor spoken to either of our new neighbors since the 20 minute embarrassment gauntlet...I am telling myself it's all a coincidence and has nothing to do with the shocking behavior from my kids...I wonder if I will ever see them again?   
My kids do yell a lot.  They do fight a lot.  They run around a lot making all sorts of noise that makes you wish you were deft...some days you would never know that I do teach my kids good manners, but I do...scouts honor!  They have minds of their own however and sometimes say what ever pops into their minds more quickly than I can install their manners!  Kids.  Parenting.  Never dull.  Never predictable.  NEVER. 

The issue I have is that I am cruelly outnumbered 4 to 1 and they know it...they get away with more than I care to confess to, but it's true.  Some days I am just too tired to catch everything...some days I have a short fuse and talk a little louder and harsher than I should, some days, everyone naps and I feel like a new person...but lately, that is only a very few "some days"...some days it really bothers me that nothing goes the way I want and none of my laundry gets done or we have to eat cereal for dinner again because I didn't make it to the store... some days, I cry about it... but that's when I tell myself it's ok because I love them, they love me, a little extra cereal eating never hurt anyone, and I am doing my best.  Some days, eating cereal for dinner is my best.  Some days, not getting the laundry done is my best...Some days, making it through the day without strangling my children is my best.  I am constantly having to remind myself that I don't need to be concerned with someone else's definition of a successful day...some days, I have to remind myself a lot.  I am just thankful that even tho I have a lot of "some days" I still deeply love my kids every day.