A Visit From The Folks

Recently my parents came for a visit from their home town in California. They came at a very busy time. The beginning of the school year. Which is even more hectic than the rest of the school year and that's saying something. My dad is retired and my mom is semi-retired. Their home setting is quite peaceful and relaxed so I felt bad that they had so much chaos circulating about their heads during their 2 week visit. To illustrate, let me give you an example of a typical morning in our household while school is in session:

Wake up Bryton and Sydney. Pack lunches for 3 kids. Oh darn, we're out of Oreos. No dessert today. Sorry kids, you get boring lunches. Awww mom. Make sure they've got snacks, water bottles, lunches and homework. Feed Captain who is staring at me like I'm the most negligent owner in the world. Beg Sydney to let me help her with her hair. When she refuses, go to wake up Brooklyn and Whitney. Pick out clothes for them (on a good day). Search frantically for my car keys and run out the door bare footed. Wait as Bryton and Sydney run to the car carrying their shoes and socks because they didn't have time to put them on in the house. Did you get your lunches? Wait as they run back inside to get their forgotten lunches. Bring Bryton and Sydney to their school 3.5 miles away. Barely make it to school before the bell rings. Get yelled at by the school traffic directors because I'm "doing it wrong." Fight traffic. Arrive back home. Do Brooklyn and Whitney's hair. Rummage through the shoe bin trying to find two shoes that match. Remind self that I need to clean out shoe bins to get rid of some of these shoes. (Whitney is the youngest of 3 girls so she gets ALL the hand-me-downs.) After dumping all of the shoes from Whitney's bin out on the floor, realize that of the 27 pairs, not one of them is the one we were looking for. Look in basement, upstairs bathrooms/bedrooms, trampoline and deck. Find them on the front porch. Oh, is this P.E. week? Then I need to find a pair of matching tennis shoes and a pair of matching, holeless socks as well. Let Captain outside who is standing at the door staring at me like "Come on woman! Get it together!" Make sure they've got their snacks, water bottles lunches and homework. Find a homework worksheet that someone forgot all about the night before and quickly have them fill it in as I tell them all the answers. At 8:23 (two minutes before the bell rings) send them away with John who drops them off on his way to work. Take a deep breath. After that, the house seems eerily quiet like the calm after a storm and for a brief moment I have no idea what to do with myself. Whatever I'm going to do, I'd better do it fast because I've got to go back to the school to get my kindergartner at 11:15. At least today I got a little break. Two days a week I've got to take Brooklyn to school an hour early for choir.

While my parents were here I was always surprised how each day, my dad would come casually strolling down the stairs at 6:30 A.M. just when the chaos was about to begin. He would make his coffee and sit at the kitchen table and just watch. After the door closed every morning at 8:23, he would linger for a while as if trying to process what he'd just witnessed, and then he'd slowly get up and head back upstairs to his room just as casually as he'd come down.

Around 3:00, when the kids come home again, the madness starts all over as they enter the house like a tornado and head straight for the kitchen, undoing the majority of what I've done during the day in a matter of minutes. After they've had snacks and a little bit of down time, it's time to start homework. Depending on the day of the week and the child, extracurricular activities also begin around this time so it's time to start finding binders, soccer cleats, batons etc. and piling into the car. Again, as all this was going on each day, my dad, joined by my mother now, just sat and watched. Taking it all in.

Tuesdays and Fridays are my favorite day. There is nothing for anyone to do after school on those days. In order to make up for leaving my parents to fend for themselves while going about our craziness on the other days of the week, and in light of the good weather that will soon be fading, we planned outings on these days so that we could have a little "fun" and they could see that we weren't always like this. This plan actually backfired on us, for two reasons:
Reason #1: Everywhere we go, we go with 4 kids and a giant, horse sized dog in tow.
Reason #2: When grandma and grandpa come with us, the four kids have to sit in the very back seat and two of them have to double buckle. That means that Captain has to sit in the storage section and all 5 of them strongly disagree with this arrangement.

It was bad enough that the kids were constantly elbowing, pinching each other or singing too loud for the other's taste. They had to go through all of this while a golden retriever tried his darndest to climb up and over their heads to escape the humiliation of having to sit in the storage section like some kind of animal. When the whole back seat started screaming at once, John and I, experienced parents that we are, sat quietly and waited for the mayhem to take its natural course. After all, the only thing that we could really do was join in the screaming which seemed counter-productive. We sat there quietly and hoped that the kids would learn from example. (Jah, right.) Meanwhile, my parents were seated in the middle section of the car with wide eyes looking like they'd like nothing more than to jump out of the moving vehicle.

On the morning of their departure, as we were saying our goodbyes after the kids had gone to school, one of the last things my dad said to me was, "We enjoy watching all the commotion." That's when it struck me that he must have been purposely getting out of bed in the mornings just so he wouldn't miss out on the free show. I thought that it was pure coincidence that he woke up when he did and that after watching everything, we made him so tired that he had to go back to bed. Really, he was just taking an intermission from sleeping to catch the next act. Between 8:23 and 3:15 was their downtime while they prepared to attend the next vaudeville production. Well, mom and dad, I'm glad we could entertain you. But be warned...next time we might just charge admission. My kids need to start saving up for clown college.