Real Life

Four days left till school starts, and I think my children are glad about that. They are, to put it bluntly, sick of each other. One minute they are playing fine, and the next they are fighting because someone fake kicked (whatever that is) someone else. One minute they are asking to help make pancakes, and the next they are whining because I told them to clean something up and why do they have to do everything around here?!!

Nothing in our real life is ever perfect, but that's fine. They don't all smile or even look at the camera when I take a picture, but whatever, they are in the picture. Motherhood isn't perfect, sometimes I let them eat a piece of candy at 7 am, which mostly happens if they catch me eating candy first and I buy their silence with another piece. But they are cute, so that helps.

This one needs a haircut, and at some point she will need braces. But she's sweet, smart, helpful, a good student, and she almost always loves to help. She is obsessed with flipping the pancakes at breakfast, and although she kind of makes them disfigured, she is learning. She loves swimming every single day, and her hair is less than fun to brush out afterwards. She thinks she is 14 and needs to wear lipgloss everyday, but does not care if her hair is a mess, women are crazy. She yell-sings constantly, even in the car, to her iPod. She is so loud that we have to turn the car radio up to hear it over her loud voice. She is perfectly wild and I cannot believe she is going to be a second grader on Thursday.

This lady goes to kindergarten in four days. She won't even be 5 yet. So sad for me. Ava is the girliest child I could ever imagine. She will not ever under any circumstances wear pants. She has to be forced to wear leggings on the coldest days of the year, but only under her skirt or dress. All skirts, all the time. She loves to accessorize with every piece of jewelry and headband possible, and I know she will never go to a day of school without earrings. She is surprisingly bossy for a middle child, and when she and Alana pretend to be iCarly or whoever Ava is constantly telling Alana what to do, and even more surprisingly Alana listens. She is still kind of a picky eater, with the weirdest aversion to rice, even though we eat rice at least one a week, she still holds out in her dislike for it. She is sweet, loving, smart, funny, has the cutest little squeaky voice, and gives out hugs like she has an endless supply of them. My little kindergartener will probably cry the first day of school, but I know she is in good hands and she is really happy to see all of her friends from preschool again.

Now this little boy, he is a wild man. He loves to talk, and yell, and even sing. The amount of talking that he does constantly surprises me. He just turned two, but I cannot even keep track of how many words he knows. He will repeat anything you tell him to say, then surprise you by yelling Giddy-up cowboy! at the top of his lungs. I don't even know where he came up with that. What a weirdo. He constantly insists that he is dying, and the only cure for what ails him is a band-aid on his finger, which he then takes off five minutes later. He must heal quickly. He loves playing with the girls, but is also content to play by himself with his huge collection of cars and trucks and action figures and balls. He also loves to watch infinite amounts of Peppa Pig and Max & Ruby because he says "Mox" is funny. He is wild, then he will catch you off guard with his sweetness. He insists that I am pregnant with a baby dog, not a baby boy, and you cannot change his mind on that subject. He is wild, sweet, smart, stubborn, and very opinionated for such a small person. I don't know how bored he will be when the girls go to school next week, but I know that he will keep me entertained while they are gone.

Even though these bratty kids keep me awake all the time, and make me watch dumb stuff on TV, and think they need to eat so much sugary cereal that I actually had to make a rule of one bowl per day, I wouldn't trade them for anything. Even the one in my belly that keeps kicking me and giving me heartburn and making me buy him more blue clothes, despite Ava's insistence that girl clothes are cuter. I can't even argue with her on that one, girl clothes are way cuter.