A toothpaste dispenser. Toothpaste is the biggest thorn in my side these days. My boys manage to smear it all over the sink, on the floor, the door, themselves and in the medicine cabinet. Apparently they have no clue how to put the lid back on the tube when they’re finished. Cody has seen commercials for a toothpaste dispenser and he tells me often that I should have one. It sounds better and better all the time.

WHAT I WANT THAT I WON’T BE GETTING ANYTIME SOON, IF EVER (but that’s OK because I’m very blessed anyway):

A Kindle. I’ve been drooling over these electronic books for months. The price tag and limited availability of books, as well as the cost of the books themselves, make it a bit less appealing, but it’s just so darn cool!

A front-loading washer and dryer. My washer and dryer are now about 10 years old and barely hold any clothes. Consequently, it takes me load after load after load to get my laundry done, so I never truly catch up. How nice it would be to spend less time on the laundry… <<DREAMY SIGH>>

An iPod Touch. I received my first iPod a few Mother’s Days ago. It’s a second generation Nano and holds 4 GB, which isn’t much these days. My sister sold me on the Touch after describing hers. Count me in!

MY PERFECT MOTHER’S DAY GIFT:

A day in which the kids don’t squabble with each other, complain about the food I’m putting on the table or argue with me. Painting my kitchen and dining room for me wouldn’t hurt either. I detest painting.

Hey, a mom can dream, right?

♦      ♦     ♦     ♦     ♦     ♦     ♦      ♦      ♦      ♦      ♦      ♦      ♦      ♦      ♦      ♦      ♦

What do you want for Mother’s Day? What would be the perfect gift?

I started out with the same method, but then quickly realized that I was only making life harder for both myself and my poor twin daughters. They were curious and wanted to touch everything. When they first started walking, they understood the meaning of “no,” but they didn’t understand why. A one-year-old just doesn’t get why her playing with a “pretty” may result in breakage and upset feelings. With two of them, I was outnumbered anyway and before long, I felt like all I was saying to them was “no.”

That was when I decided that I would put anything I didn’t want broken up and out of reach of tiny little hands, until such time as they understood what “fragile” and “break” meant. This worked out well for us and I’m glad I did it that way because, frankly, I didn’t want my nice possessions broken in an effort to teach my toddlers not to touch them, nor did I want to be constantly hovering over them, waiting to correct a misguided touch. At other people’s houses, I watched them carefully to make sure that they didn’t handle anything they shouldn’t.

When they got older, they understood quite well what they could and couldn’t touch, and why. It was much easier to teach them later when they understood the logistics, i.e., breaking something caused an upset mother. I, in turn, didn’t lose anything I valued and was able to do other tasks without worrying that my toddlers were damaging anything. My motto — “If you don’t want it broken or damaged, put it away.”

This method might not be a desirable one for some parents and I’m certainly not saying it’s the only right one; it’s just what worked best for us. Part of this whole parenting journey is figuring out what suits our personalities and those of our children’s the best. Sometimes that might not be what others label as the “right” way, but in the end, we have to do what we feel is good for our kids and forget about what other people think.

How did you handle your toddlers and breakables? If you haven’t reached that stage yet, how do you plan to approach it?

Ha! As if I do everything.

I’m so incredibly far from being on top of it all, which anyone who knows me in real life would completely and totally vouch for.

Case in point:

My floor is vacuumed, but my dishwasher is full of clean dishes while my sink is full of dirty ones.

My office is fairly clean, but my bedroom looks like a bomb went off.

My front yard is mowed, but only half the back yard is. Don’t even mention the sides of the driveway.

The other day, Cody went out the door with a completely mismatched shirt and shorts and I didn’t notice until several hours later.

I often get involved in something and have no trouble sucking up several hours before I realize how much time I’ve just invested or, worse, wasted.

More often than not, my laundry pile is overflowing.

My kids sometimes have to remind me that it’s meal time because I’ve gotten so caught up in what I’m doing.

I always have a huge to-do list and am lucky to get just a few things on it completed by the day’s end.

I can, and do, beat myself up about not getting everything accomplished, and, truth be told, I could do many things better, but why spend all my time feeling guilty?

Here’s how I see it: Life is hard. It’s full of pain and sorrow and loss. So one of my biggest philosophies is to enjoy it as much as possible. That means not getting overly stressed-out about things that don’t matter in the big picture. So what if I don’t do the dishes until the morning, when the kids get on the bus to go to school? Night time is my productive writing time and I’m going to take advantage of that. It’s not how my mom would do it, or how most other people I know would do it, but it works for me. I waste enough time feeling guilty without picking up extra reasons.

Being flexible as a parent also means being flexible with yourself. It’s impossible to be on top of everything, all the time, and if you are, your relationships are definitely suffering. Do what works for you and your family. The goal here is to raise happy, healthy, responsible, mature, honest, contributing adults, right? Make that happen however you need to.

Most importantly, don’t beat yourself up if your house isn’t sparkling and your laundry is about ready to crawl to the washer by itself. I think Erma Bombeck said it best when (to paraphrase) she said that she’d rather have a messy house and good memories with her kids than to keep it spotless and spend all her time worrying about keeping it that way.

What are some of the ways in which you, too, are NOT Super Mom? Come on, ‘fess up!

♦     ♦     ♦     ♦     ♦     ♦     ♦     ♦     ♦     ♦     ♦     ♦     ♦     ♦     ♦     ♦     ♦     ♦     ♦     ♦

Have you entered my giveaway for a roomy Earth Baby diaper bag? Take a second to leave a comment to win!

Her most recent coup is an essay she wrote for Babble.com as a rebuttal for the offensive piece that Women’s Health ran recently on women who have large families, dubbed “bumpaholics.” Meagan was quoted in the aforementioned article, entitled, “The Belly-Rubbing High;” however, most of her comments were left out as they most certainly would have disproved the author’s theory that women who have large families have emotional, psychological and/or intellectual issues.

There are so many offensive parts to this article, I could probably write a doctoral dissertation in my efforts to refute it. The bottom line is that though I’ve no doubt there are women who fit the writer’s description of loving the attention pregnancy brings and trying to fill a void in their lives with babies, the generalizations that prevail throughout the piece feel like they’re aimed at ALL mothers of large families, myself included.

Now, in the interest of full disclosure here, let me say that before I had kids, and possibly even when I only had the girls, I was completely and utterly boggled by big families. I felt very critical and superior toward them, particularly the large families in my community who I knew didn’t have a lot of money.

“Why would they have so many kids when they can’t really afford them?” I asked my husband multiple times. He, who is from a large and not super-prosperous family, always defended these families, saying they probably loved kids and that was more important to them than having money. I’d just shake my head, feeling sorry for these people who clearly didn’t know how to use birth control. To me it seemed irresponsible to have a bunch of kids, especially when you weren’t able to provide well for them.

Now here I am, the mother of four, and vocal about my desire to have more. Craaaaazy, right?

My point is that I know what it’s like to be on both sides. I think our society has taught us to value material possessions more than personal relationships and this can translate into the decisions we make about our offspring as well. Larger families are looked down upon in general because they often have less and seem chaotic and crazy, at least one of which is pretty close to true for most of us, I think.

Here’s the part of the article that really lit my fuse more than any other: “But plenty of couples stop at one or two children, despite the fundamental drive to reproduce. This is because we can use our higher brain functions to keep those instincts in check, reminding ourselves that children cost money—about $950 a month until they’re 18—and require an extraordinary amount of time and energy.”

Oh, OK, so evidently I’m not intelligent enough to keep my instincts in check? Yeah, I’m not at all insulted by that generalization.

I can,  however, use my higher brain functions to save mega bucks by swapping baby clothes, toys and necessities with my extended family members; forcing my children to save up their money and buy their own high-dollar items; buying clothes and shoes on clearance; getting food in bulk; and a zillion other tricks I’ve learned over the years. $950/month per child? Seriously? That’s absolutely crazy. There’s no reason on God’s green earth that a child should cost that much unless he/she has some major medical issues.

More on this another time …

I’m also going to start posting here more often. Right now, I’m setting a goal of three times a week.

If you like my blog, feel free to pass the link on to your friends. I’m trying to expand my readership, so getting the word out there would help me a lot. =)

If you have comments, questions or suggestions, please fire away. I’d love to hear them.

Have a great and productive day!

The following conversation has played out at our house many times:

“Mom, look! My tooth finally came out!” one of my twin daughters says.

“Better put it under your pillow before you forget,” I say.

Her excitement instantly dissolves. “Do you think the tooth fairy will come tonight?” she asks.

“I’m sure she will, honey. Maybe she’s not so busy right now,” I answer, swallowing the sick, guilty feeling curdling in my throat.

I’m a note writer. I have to keep a running to-do list at all times or I will forget to do something as simple as returning a phone call. The problem is I can’t write “Put money under pillow” or “Be tooth fairy” on my to-do list. It’s always sitting out in the open – where I can remember to find it – and my daughters are often interested in what my notes for the day are.

With no written reminder, I just can’t seem to remember to put that money under the pillow. If my husband is home, he switches the teeth for money in my place, but since his job often involves being gone nights, the role of tooth fairy usually falls to me. And I’m always, absolutely without fail, late.

One time, the tooth fairy was so outrageously overdue, my daughter left a tightly-folded, carefully printed note along with the tooth under her pillow. It said, “To toth farey you are at Rachel’s. Ples com. I lik you but prite ples com and get mi tooth.”

Though I chuckled as I read it, standing in the bright light of the hallway outside their bedroom door, the shame I felt overshadowed any real humor in the situation. The letter was pitiful; my daughter had been driven to write this?

The guilt and remorse mounted even further when my daughters came banging home from school one day and demanded to know why their friends’ tooth fairies didn’t wait a week to collect their teeth. I had no good explanation.

“Maybe our tooth fairy has more kids in her area and she’s just behind schedule,” I said, trying to hide my discomfort, yet be convincing. This could, in theory, be a plausible explanation. We live in a rural area where the kids’ schoolmates live up to 35 miles away. The hastily concocted cover-up was totally lame, but thankfully, they seemed to buy it.

Now ten, my daughters have lost the majority of their teeth. They still claim belief in the tooth fairy, but at this point it’s mostly whimsy – a fantasy they seem reluctant to give up, even though they’ve been faced with clear evidence to the contrary on several occasions.

I’m hoping our tooth fairy (I guess that’s me) gets it together before my two younger sons start losing their teeth. Then I won’t have to hear anything like this disheartening conversation again:

“Mom, are you the tooth fairy?” asked one twin.

“No, she couldn’t be the tooth fairy because she’d never be so late with the money,” said the other.

Yep, that Mom of the Year award should be arriving any day now.

We were at the store and Logan had $1 to spend. He found a purple plastic recorder for 88¢.

I encouraged him to get it because he’s always using his sisters’ recorders, which makes them very angry. They don’t want his germy little mouth anywhere near their stuff. (Sound familiar?)

“Then I can have my OWN flute!” he said.

“Let’s get it, then,” I agreed.

All was well and good.

Until this morning.

At what I consider the unnecessarily early hour of 6:30, I awoke to the “flute” being played right by my head. A rather unpleasant wake-up call for the entire household.

Dumb, Sarah, dumb.

After four kids, shouldn’t I know better than that? What did I expect?

Now, too late, I remember why the girls’ recorders mysteriously disappeared for a time shortly after their receipt. Rachel and Andie were much younger then and since the novelty of the sound hadn’t worn off for what seemed like far too long, the offending instruments made a semi-permanent home on top of our very tall bookshelf.

This little purple gem may go missing soon as well. If Logan continues to get up before everyone else in his excitement to help us greet the morning with his version of music, it just might find housing on the same bookshelf top.

Now if only the overly large, and therefore unable to be hidden, baritone Rachel has just started learning to play came with a mute button . . .

What are some of your kids’ most annoying toys and why? Do you ever resort to hiding them?

“Is Santa wearing a costume?” he asked me.

“Yes,” I said.

“Then Santa’s a FAKE,” he spit.

“Why do you say that?” I said, startled by this conclusion.

“Because we only wear costumes on Halloween. That means that Santa isn’t real if he wears a costume.”

Nothing I said could convince him otherwise.

I can’t believe he has lost his belief in Santa over a perceived inauthenticity of Santa’s threads!

It’s logic I never would have dreamed up at his age.

“It’s coming down really fast, so it’s like a miracle,” he told me seriously, in the way that kids so often do, innocently reminding us jaded adults that everyday events truly are miracles.

Sometimes all it takes to rediscover the beauty and magic all around us is a 4-year-old’s unbiased observations.

How has your child shown you the simplicity and wonder of normal events that adults so often overlook?

I never thought about this much, despite the many bargains I’ve discovered as a parent, until about a month ago when I arrived at the check-out stand with my overflowing cart.

The check-out girl was young, maybe in high school even. She scanned all my items while I looked on in barely concealed joy as each piece of clothing was rung up, thinking to myself thoughts such as, “Those pants were only $4! I am Awe. Some!”

“Wow, you got a great deal,” the clerk commented as I, filled with ridiculous elation, wrote out my check.

“I know,” I said smugly.

“Four bags of clothes for that price! Geez, I’m lucky to get one piece of clothing for that,” she said.

Oh yeah. I had forgotten all about the days when shopping at Kmart or other discount stores for clothes was a huge social faux paus (obviously this was when I could afford to buy my own).

I nodded. “I know, when I was your age I didn’t shop for clothes here either,” I told her. “It’s amazing how having kids changes your perspective. Especially when you have four of them to clothe.”

I left the store feeling weirdly old and a teeny bit flustered. What happened to the days when I paid full-price for a piece of clothing without thinking about it? When I saw a pair of sandals I wanted and didn’t wait until they were on sale, or better yet, clearance, before I bought them? I can’t even remember the last time this has happened. Probably before I had kids.

These days I have become quite the bargain shopper. It has turned almost into an addiction to see what I can find for how little. This is really embarrassing to admit because it makes me look really cheap, but I get quite testy if I have to pay over $10 for a pair of shoes. I guess it’s because I know I CAN get them for that price (or less) if I look hard enough. Our closets are filled with the fruit of my purchases, many of which are $5 or less.

It doesn’t make sense either. I’ll happily plop down $50 on a meal with my hubby at Red Lobster (3-1/2 hours away), but I’ll quibble internally with myself as to whether I should spend an extra $2 to get the shoes that don’t lace up. Yes, I know how crazy that sounds, but we all have our idiosyncracies, right? There are just some items we’re willing to spend more on than others.

Bargain shopping is practically a sport where I live, at least among my friends and me. We regale each other with tales of how much we saved on X item, point to our kids and say things like, “I only paid $4 for this dress!” and marvel over each other’s bargain hunting abilities. We trade secrets — “JCPenney has an extra 20% off their clearance clothing!” — and covet the great deals our friends found that we missed out on.

I don’t remember doing this as a teenager or young adult. In fact, it was the opposite. The more a person spent on something, the cooler she was.

So, one way you officially know you’re a parent is when bargain shopping becomes a hobby. Because, after all, you’re saving that extra money to put towards your kids’ braces/school/toys/college tuition, right? Of course you can probably get a bargain on those as well if you try hard enough . . .

Are you a bargain shopper? If so, what’s your weakness? Clothing? Shoes? Toys? Everything (like me)?