1. Create a family rule that goes something like this: “No sitting on the couch without underwear.” This seems, at first glance, to be something the offspring might know intuitively, but in actuality it is an oft-quoted and difficult to enforce rule.
2. Pry a flattened, dead bird from inside my sobbing son’s makeshift banjo. (Think empty blackberry container covered in tin foil and strung with three or four rubber bands.) In a cemetery. And the crying was NOT because of his two dead grandpas buried in said cemetery, or even the fact that the poor bird was dead, but his giant hiccupping cries were because he wasn’t allowed to take the dead bird home!
3. Supply endless plates, sponges, pieces of foil et al. for the frog habitats being built in this yard. This place is just JUMPING with frogs. And little boys who want to build them homes, (whether the creatures want them or not.) And the little architects are pretty miserable that there is no netting or chicken wire available. Poor things.
4. Flush the toilet every single time I walk by the bathroom. This one is self- explanatory.
5. Dole out popsicles, fruit snacks, pretzel rods, snack crackers and juice boxes like some soup kitchen on steroids. Really, how could these waif-like kids eat this much?! And still maintain their skeletal figures?
6. Insist that the offspring change their clothes at least several times a week in the summer. (Sometimes they also take baths, although they maintain that the chlorine in the pool scours them just fine.) I probably could have saved a ton of money on the wardrobes. This does not include, of course, the costume pieces, which can never be too prolific. And summer apparently is the perfect time for tiger suits, dragons with head- pieces, and full body sharks.
7. Cower in fear when my son comes to hug me because I have been burned one too many times by the Fake-Hug-Drop-Worm-Down-Mom’s-Shirt move.
8. Catch my breath when the little guy rides his bike at breakneck speed down the sidewalk to cross a street or his brother front flips off the diving board. My heart is strong but these daredevils give these poor valves a work out, both in the intensity of my love for them and the heart-stopping rhythms with which these kids live their lives.
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