All this week Eric has been traveling for work, which makes me a SINGLE single mom, I guess? (Super single? Single squared?) I digress…anyway, over the weekend I bought all of the supplies to make smores to celebrate our new patio, so clearly the next four days it rained. Really buying the supplies was just one giant effort to make six kids complain for 96 hours.
Mom: 0, Mother Nature: 1.
One of the nights Eric was gone my kids begged to go outside and make a campfire and have the damn smores already. So I did what any good mother would do, I blackmailed them. I made them clean their rooms, put away laundry, clean up the playroom, and then told them if they cleared their plates at dinner we’d make smores for dessert.
Dinner dragged on beyond all reasonable capacities for patience and time, and I started kicking kids out of their seats and into bathrooms to expedite things. I sent Reese into the shower while Ryan was lollygagging over his last two bites (just eat the food, man!) Meanwhile, I’m running around trying to get all the things done, before bedtime (because you know ain’t nobody staying up past bedtime) and at this point I’m also chasing daylight.
Ryan is finally done dicking around at the table and I send him into the shower with Reese and finished cleaning the kitchen. By this time Reese was already done, and Ryan was still in the shower. I was still soaking wet from yoga, so I threw the little girls in the bathtub and to save time and make sure we got outside while there was still daylight, I jumped in the shower with Ryan…for what will definitely be the last time that ever happens.
First of all, the kid is in my shower and complaining that I take up too much space. Again, you’re in MY shower.
And, though he is autistic, he is ALL boy. So we’re in the shower and he’s under the water, and I’m scrubbing my hair and my eyes are closed, and all the sudden I hear him shout “whoa, what are those?!” and looked down to find him tuning in Tokyo.
Both hands. Big smile.
Check please.
We get outside, and I’m all Bear Grylls on the campfire with my garden-center-bought kindling. And my camp fire game is weak. The kids are getting pissy wanting to know where their smores are, and I’m pulling their drawings off the fridge to shove into the fire pit, hoping the paper will kickstart a flame, since the logs soaked in kerosene weren’t doing shit. And when that didn’t help I started pulling out recyclables. And Reese (AKA Miss Know It All) is all, “moooooom, we’re having smoresssss, not cereallllll”, and I’m wondering why I gave birth to her.
The fire never lit. It was basically smoking kindling that turned sort of red? And the kids kept asking me if a campfire was really just a bunch of stinky smoke. Like I get it. I suck at fires. Thanks, guys.
Finally, the log turns red enough that I just say screw it and hold a marshmallow to the kindling and pray the wine fairy comes.
I started with Ryan and got his marshmallow melty enough to hand over to him, so he obviously immediately dropped it on the pea gravel and then tried to eat it anyway. The net result was him spitting out tiny rocks for the next ten minutes.
I decided to have Lola and Eliza share a marshmallow to keep them from setting themselves on fire. (Or on smoke, at this point.) And in an unprecedented run at mother of the year, I made both of the little girls cry at the same time.
Lola because she didn’t want to be sticky, and marshmallows are sticky. And Eliza because she only wanted the chocolate. Which is hysterical because the baby literally had a mouthful of gravel three seconds before, and she’s crying cause I handed her a cookie covered in fluff and Hershey bars. The travesty.
All the while Reese is in the background groaning and I can hear her eyes rolling in the back of her head while she reminds me that she ALWAYS goes last and she has to wait foreverrrrrr for everythinggggg. And after all of her reminding me that she doesn’t have a smore yettttttt, she decides she really just wants a marshmallow. And not a toasted one. Which was good because by then even the cereal box stopped smoking.
