Counting Down

Come close. I can only whisper this. Shhhhh.

I can't wait until my twins are old enough to leave home. Only six more years.

I'm not kidding.

This afternoon at 2:30 p.m., Babygirl woke just as my husband took the twins to their meeting with their mentor teacher. I'd secretly hoped she'd sleep longer so the house would be quiet all at once. It was not to be. Instead, her long-legged, lean body wobbled on my left knee while I clicked and clacked on the computer keyboard and discovered that the twins had done very little work for the day.

We are on Week Five, counting down to the end of the school year. They must accomplish a great deal of work so we can end on schedule. It's not optional. Each day this week, they need to do eight lessons. Today, TwinBoyA did three lessons successfully. TwinBoyB did four lessons, all wrong. He failed two assessments and skimmed over his literature to such an extent that he missed had no idea when the Middle Ages were and what the Crusades were.

I typed out a letter to each child explaining what they'd accomplished and what they needed to finish before they could play or watch television. Upon their return, TwinBoyA read his letter and cheerfully finished five more lessons. TwinBoyB exclaimed at the unfairness of life, stomped his feet, cried a few dramatic tears, declared he would not do anymore work and furthermore told me firmly, "DO NOT TALK TO ME ANYMORE!"

I search my heart and find that I will not miss this. As my husband left (I can't remember where he went), DaycareKid and CuteBaby woke. YoungestBoy returned from school. The two neighbor boys showed up and I told them they could only play in the back yard. The baby needed his bottle, so I sat on the floor feeding him while TwinBoyB babbled on and on, struggling to find a way to avoid actually reading his science material. He took the assessment four more times after failing it the first time. Finally, he understood that the inner core of the earth is the inner part.

At one point, I was trying to get to the laundry room to put YoungestBoy's baseball shirt into the dryer, but I kept getting distracted. CuteBaby needed a diaper change. The phone rang. Babygirl wanted shoes on. I need to pee. Oh wait, the laundry room . . . oh, I need to fold that basket of stuff.

Then I smelled the unmistakable odor of a half-potty-trained kid gone wrong.

"Did you p o o p in your pants?" I asked DaycareKid.

Big brown eyes looked innocent and he said, "No."

I said, "Come here."

I felt his backside and found a solid little ping-pong ball of it hanging in his brand new Spiderman underpants. Why do kids think no one will notice this personal problem?

(Well, this is a rambling story, isn't it?)

At 5:20 p.m., I carted CuteBaby upstairs to hand over YoungestBoy's baseball shirt to my news-watching husband and he said in surprise, "He's still here?"

Yes. Him, DaycareKid, Babygirl, TwinBoyA, TwinBoyB, YoungestBoy, and Neighbor Kid One and Neighbor Kid Two. I was trying to feed YoungestBoy an early dinner, answer the phone, hold CuteBaby, wipe DaycareKid's nose, shake off the leech-like grip of Babygirl, boil potatoes and not go insane. The daycare moms both came at once, the phone rang again, my husband left with YoungestKid, but not before bumping the car into Babygirl's trike which was abandoned at the car bumper by DaycareKid on the way to his own car.

Yes, yes, yes . . . we've been over this before and I should be am savoring these crazy days of mothering. But I can't see how I will miss TwinBoyB's antics and his complete lack of interest in all things academic. I sat in the living room at 7:00 p.m., going over his literature lesson with him. He is fully capable of reading his student guide and the accompanying literature book, but he most often won't do so without eagle-eyed supervision.

Why? Why? Why? (I say this while flailing my arms in the air, clutching great snarls of my own unruly hair and foaming--just a little--at the mouth.)

Maybe this is like transition in labor. You know, that point where you think, "I absolutely cannot do this. I changed my mind. I'm not having a baby." You are too far in to change your mind and there is no choice but to carry on, breathe in, breathe out, focus on the end result, maybe scream a little and clutch the sides of the birthing pool and look into the eyes of the women in the room who know that they did it and you will, too, and someday, you'll forget just how much it hurt. Maybe even tomorrow.

I hope so. I'm looking into the eyes of those of you who did this and lived--and I'm talking about having twelve-year old boys who hate school. We'll be okay, right? Right? I can do this, right?

Okay, then. Okay. Tomorrow's a new day, a new opportunity to accidentally squish slugs while I'm walking in the rain and a new chance to get this mothering thing right.