Summer, Summer, Slumber Time

Glory, glory, hallelujah school is out.  I hate the school year.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, I am very thankful that we live in America and our kids have the opportunity to go to school and learn stuff and all, but the school year sucks.  Between all of the projects, the field trips, the tests, the report cards, the lunches, the extra-curricular activities, etc, it is exhausting.  We basically get sucked up into a tornado of ‘crap to do’ in August, and get spit out in May battered, beaten, and broken.  This past year we had five kids in school.  Starting in August, with Stella going to K4, we’ll have six.  That’s six different humans constantly dealing with school related problems.  Not to mention our oldest is nineteen and our youngest is four, so we’ll be dealing with problems ranging from dorm room assignments and nursing school issues to a kindergartener’s overinflated sense of self-confidence that was brought on by…..

Me: Stella, how do you spell cat?

Stella: R-F-B

Me:  That’s right!! Good job!! You are soooo smart! And pretty! And wonderful!

I’m sorry. I just don’t want to be the one that rejects her.  That's what school is for. Anyway, school sucks.  Bring on summer.  However, summer does present its own set of challenges; i.e. sleep schedules and whatnot.  You see, my sleep schedule stays on Eastern Time Zone over the summer but the kids apparently immediately switch to Hawaii-Aleutian Time which is six hours behind.  Seriously, I wake up six hours before them and they go to sleep six hours after me.  Last night the girls started watching a movie, STARTED watching a movie at 10:30pm!  I can’t stay awake for a movie that starts at 10:30am.  So whatever, watching a late movie seems harmless, right?  Well it would be harmless if they didn’t set the volume on the TV somewhere between ‘motorcycle parked in my bedroom’ and ‘747 taking off from my roof’.  It was so loud I thought the characters’ voices were coming from my own head.  What possesses someone to raise the volume up that high? 

Can you hear it?

Yeah.

How bout now?

Yeah.

Now?

YEAH!

NOW!!

YEAH!!!!!!!

OKAY THAT’S PROBABLY GOOD THEN!!!!

Luckily I didn’t have to get out of bed to go yell at them to turn it down because Jaxon came in the room to wake us up so I could enter the Hulu password into his Kindle for the 9,000th time.  I made him go downstairs to tell them to turn it down.  He went down the stairs and still had to yell at the top of his lungs for them to hear him.  

The movie alone wouldn’t have been that bad, but the night before I was awoken by the sounds of a male voice talking in my house.  I checked the time on my phone and it was 3:00am. I hopped up thinking I might get to shoot an intruders, but when I walked out into the hallway I realized it was just Cole talking on the phone to his girlfriend.  At 3am.  And don’t give me any of that, “Awww  puppy love.  That’s so sweet” crap.  I’ve read their text messages to each other.  They’re not that interesting.  Here’s how 99% of their conversations go: (translation in parentheses, for all of you who don’t speak ‘teen’)

Cole: wyd (What are you doing?)

Destiny: nothing hbu (I am not currently doing anything.  How about yourself?)

Cole: nothing haha –laughing crying face emoji- (I am not doing anything either.  It’s funny because we’re both doing the same thing, yet nothing at all)

Destiny: haha –laughing crying face emoji-  (I also think this is funny)

Cole: I miss you –sad face emoji- (I’m not really sure what to say, but I’m pretty sure you want me to miss you)

Destiny: ikr. I miss you too! –sad face emoji- (I know, right?  We are in agreement again. I too am sad)

Cole: I can’t wait to see you. Maybe this weekend –praying hands emoji- (I would like to see you this weekend.  God and parents willing)

Destiny: that would be lit (I would enjoy that)

Cole: ikr (I concur with your last statement)

Destiny: hahaha (I don’t really have anything else to say but I really want to keep this text going)

Cole: haha (I don’t know what to say either but I’m glad we’re communicating)

Destiny: -red heart emoji- (I have strong feelings for you)

Cole: -blue heart emoji- (I also have very strong feelings for you, but they’re also different because my emoji is blue)

 

You get the idea.  And it goes on like that for sixteen hours a day every day.  They weren’t exactly solving the financial crisis on that 3am phone call.

To make my sleeping matters worse, my beautiful wife, who I love dearly, decided to drink a gallon of coffee at 6pm yesterday evening in order to have the energy to lead our group of 12 elementary students at vacation Bible school last night.  This seemed like a good idea for the short term because she did, in fact, have plenty of energy for VBS.  Long term, however, it was probably not such a good idea.  She could not go to sleep. At all.  We tried everything to tire her out.  Some things I minded, some things I didn’t mind so much.  –winky face emoji- After I fell asleep, every thirty minutes or so, I’d get a nudge:

Rach: Babe, did you see there was a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv?

Me: Mmmm Hmmm.

Rach:  Isn’t that awful?

Me: Mmmm Hmmm.

 

Rach: Babe, did you see that alligator that had a person in its mouth?

Me: Mmmm Hmmm.

Rach: I wonder who it was. Can you imagine? 

Me: Mmmm Hmmm.

Rach: Isn’t that awful?

 

Rach: Babe, babe, did you see that lady fight off her daughter’s kidnapper in that store?

Me: Mmmm Hmmm.

Rach: Isn’t that awful?

Me: Mmmm Hmmm.

Rach:  I don’t think I should bring more than one kid with me to TJ Maxx anymore.  Because what if while I was fighting off one attacker, another attacker took one of the other kids.  Do you think they would…Babe….babe?

Me: Huh?

Rach: Do you think I should avoid TJ Maxx altogether?  What about Ross?  Do you think a kidnapper would try anything at Ross? Maybe I'll just bring one kid to Ross, but save multiple kid trips for Marshalls. Babe?

 

Rach: Babe, hey…..I can’t sleep.  

Me: (no response)

Rach:  Hey did you hear me?  I can’t sleep.

Me:  Mmmm Hmmm.

Rach:  I just can’t go to sleep.

At this point I check my phone and it’s 4:30 am—a whopping 45 minutes before I’m supposed to wake up.  Should be angry, right?  Of course not.  Why?  I didn’t have to wake anybody up.  I didn’t have to pack any lunches.  I didn’t have to wake anybody up again because they didn’t get up the first time.  I didn’t have to send any teenage girls back upstairs to put on real shorts.  I didn’t have to dole out any money for a “field trip” that someone “told me about yesterday”.  I didn’t have to find anyone’s shoes.  I didn’t have to wake anybody up again because it’s time to leave and they didn’t wake up the last two times. I simply got up out of bed.  Quietly got ready.  Quietly packed up my stuff.  And quietly walked out the door with a giant smile on my face.  Man I love summer.

Sick Baby

Our 3 year old, Stella, is sick. Having a sick 3 year old is the worst. Sick teenagers are way easier. With teenagers it’s like, “Oh you have a fever? Here’s a bottle of Tylenol and a glass of water. Watch some Netflix and call me when you’re ready to crawl out of your hole.” But sick 3 year olds are different. They’re so sad and pathetic and cute, and you have to make sure they don’t run a fever for too long so their organs don’t shut down. Having a sick toddler is like carrying around a new iphone without a case. A sick teenager is like having an otter box on your phone. Sure you want to take care of it, but it’s not as life or death.

 Anyway, Stella was running a pretty high fever, so we let her sleep in our bed last night. At first she started off in the middle of the bed between Rach and me. Rach was angling for a back rub so she asked Stella if they could trade spots. 

Rach: Stella, can you and Daddy switch spots so he can rub my back?

Stella: No thanks. I like it here.

Rach: Stella?

Stella: No Daddy needs to rub my back.

 At this point Rach got up and went to the other side of the bed, putting me in the middle. Then I heard, “Babe, rub my back.” “No, Daddy, rub my back!” “Rub my back!” “No, mine!” So I did what any self-respecting father would do. I pretended to go to sleep. (Which was immediately followed by me actually going to sleep). The joke was on me, however, because at around midnight, I awoke to find myself the only one under the covers unable to move because they were both on top of the covers. I look to my right, and there is Rach’s face about 2 inches away from mine, breathing on me as if I was a mirror that she was about to wipe off. I look to my left, and there is Stella’s face, also 2 inches away from mine, breathing just the same. I felt like I was strapped to a gurney inside a hot air balloon. It wouldn’t have been as bad but I could actually hear the germs laughing and high-fiving as they left Stella’s mouth and flew into mine; the equivalent of the Syrian refugees being shown the red carpet to America just as I was trying to make my immune system great again.

 So I wiggle out from under the covers and Kung Fu Panda my way to the open side of the bed next to Stella. Since I had reached my maximum number of germ visas I decided to face away from Stella toward the outside of the bed. This would’ve been a great plan but I did not anticipate that Stella would be perfectly content being the big spoon. I outweigh her by close to 200 lbs. It would be like me trying to be the big spoon with a brontosaurus, but there she was, knees in my back and her feverish hand on my shoulder; inching closer and closer to the point that I couldn’t lay back flat without crushing her. She wasn’t so much trying to be the big spoon as she was trying to crawl inside me like a freezing rabbit trying to find warmth in a bear carcass. We 'slept' like that for a few hours until about 3am, Rach wakes me up and says “I think her fever spiked again. We have to find the thermometer.” This July we will have been married for ten years. I know good and well that ‘We need to find the thermometer’ actually means 'You need to get up and go look for the thermometer while I lay in bed and hollers out places for you to look."

I look in the medicine cabinet. It’s not there. I look in all of the bathrooms. It’s not there. I look in the medicine cabinet again. It’s not there again. Rach calls and wakes up our 18 year old Tori, who is sleeping in her dorm, because she may have been the last one to use it. She says check Stella’s night stand. I look there. It’s not there. I check under the bed. It’s not there. At this point I know that Rach won’t let me back in the bed until I find the stupid thermometer, but I’ve checked every rational place that it would be. So I just start checking random places, like under the kitchen sink, and in the silverware drawer, and behind the entertainment center. Rach finally comes downstairs and says she woke up our 13 year old Scarlett, and she said it’s in the medicine cabinet. I start to tell Rach that I checked the medicine cabinet 3 times already and it’s not in there, but just as I start to speak I see her walk to the medicine cabinet, open it, grab the thermometer, and shoot me a dirty look as she walks back upstairs. Dang. Now she’s thinking that I’m either a jerk or an idiot. Lucky for me I’m just an idiot. 

Her temperature is 102.5 so we pump her full of medicine and make sure it comes down to a non-organ-threatening level. Stella slept for the rest of the night and Rach and I were able to get a full 2 hours before we had to get the other kids ready for school. At this point in the story, I’m supposed to come up with some anecdote about how rewarding parenting can be. Or how at some point in the night Stella groaned and said, “Daddy?.....”, “Yes sweetie?”, “…..I love you.” (which really did happen) And my heart melted and made it all worth it. Or I should say something about how she’s only going to be little like this for a short time, and we need to enjoy it because we’re going to blink and she’ll be grown. I’d like to tell you that we learned a valuable lesson, or blah, blah, blah. But I can’t. I’m tired, and the only thing in my brain right now is one of those empty cloud thought bubble emoji’s. Or maybe the zzz emoji followed by the sick face emoji followed by the gun emoji. I need to stop sign emoji. Praying hands emoji for me.