Ketchup Is a Vegetable: And Other Lies Moms Tell Themselves (10 page)

“We’re at the beach! What do you want
me
to do?!” I screamed at this perfect stranger.

He glanced at his friends, turned and quickly walked away.

“Yeah, you KEEP walking!” I yelled after him.

Now you are probably sitting there reading this and thinking, “Well, she needs to read one of those clever new cookbooks about how to hide veggies in her children’s food.” I have been there and
done
that, and my children can sniff out a sweet potato like a drug dog working border patrol. It doesn’t work for me, but you go right ahead and steam your veggies, make purees and mix them in your Kraft Easy Mac and just see what happens.

If getting your kids to eat is a hassle, you have
no idea
what’s going to happen when you start trying to coordinate the sleep schedules of multiple people. Sleeping and eating are two of the most basic human functions, so you would think they would come naturally. And you would be wrong.

If sleep deprivation is a form of torture, the CIA needs to unleash my kids on all Al Qaeda suspects in captivity. They are professional nap time terrorists who are very dedicated to their own little jihad. I'm pretty sure that they have a team meeting every morning while I'm sleeping for the measly thirty minutes they so
gratuitously
allow me every day.

In my head it goes something like this:

My oldest Aubrey functions as team leader and opens the meeting, “I know we ran out of Cheerios yesterday so I’ll scream and cry for the first two hours for Cheerios. Emma, you just eat whatever she gives you. Baby Sadie, you cry until she whips out a Big Bertha.”

Middle child Emma throws in her two-cents, “I wore my favorite dress yesterday and got ketchup ALL over it and since Mommy hasn't done laundry in a week, I'll refuse to wear anything but that.”

“Good thinking, Emma! Baby Sadie, you wait ‘til we are ready to walk out the door to poop. You know how much Momma hates having to come back in the house once we’re all in the car.” Aubrey says with a maniacal laugh.

They cover every aspect of the day, filling out spread sheets with sleeping schedules so I am never left unsupervised, and take turns being the “good one” to try to avoid arousing my suspicions. But I am onto them... I just can't find any evidence of premeditation.

Once during nap time, I went from bed to bed getting everyone settled in. After numerous threats, I finally got everyone including Sadie asleep. I went to climb into my bed with Aubrey and realized she was smack dab in the center of
my
“nest-o-pillows” asleep, the nerve! But I was determined, so I grabbed a couple of extra pillows and got in the bed on the other side... and woke her up.

“I'll just close my eyes and she’ll go back to sleep,” I thought to myself.

Wrong
.

She was
awake
, and whining for juice. I dragged my butt out of the nice warm bed, got her juice and told her that nap time was
not
over and to go back to sleep. But it was pointless; I should have realized it then and there. She had taken a power nap... the bane of every mother's existence.
For some unknown reason, maybe denial, I continued to lie in the bed and try to sleep. About every four minutes, just as my thoughts were getting cloudy and I was beginning to drift off, Aubrey would touch me — just enough to wake me up. Torture.

I rolled away from her and closed my eyes for the hundredth time, I was lying on a Polly Pocket but it was a small price to pay if I could just sleep for thirty minutes... dammit, the Polly Pocket was really hurting. (They really had thought of
everything
.)

I rolled back towards Aubrey, but kept my eyes slammed shut. I didn't want to give her any indication that I was awake. I could hear her moving around and knew she'd pounce at the slightest sign of weakness. All of a sudden I felt her lunge towards me and my nostrils were
covered
by her mouth as she took a DEEEEEP breath and blew her orange juice breath into my nostrils! I sat up, choking from the sudden and unexpected influx of air into my lungs.

What
the hell
was that? Did they talk about it at this morning's meeting? Who was the mastermind of this new technique?

As I got out of bed, defeated, I had another mental picture of their team meeting. White blond curls bouncing as they leaned together in conspiracy, with six tiny hands in a circle, “Ready.... BREAK!” I could just see Emma and Sadie saluting their commander as they commenced to driving me right over the edge.

T
raveling with kids is a joy in and of itself. There is nothing like packing up your entire house, shoving it all in your car, and sitting less than two feet away from every member of your immediate family for hours on end. The fun increases exponentially with each child you add to the mix. You have to pack everything you might possibly need. Clothes for all three kids, extra clothes for the two-year-old in case she has a potty accident, extra clothes for the baby in case she throws up, extra clothes for everybody for riding horses and four-wheelers on the farm. Diapers and wipes and pull-ups, snacks and juice cups and bottles. Coloring books, favorite stuffed animals, favorite blankies.

My husband Zeb, who is just
barely
capable of packing everything he needs for a trip (like a suit when we went home for my sister’s wedding) likes to preface every road trip with this statement. “Let’s only take what we really need.”

As if
my thought process goes something like this, “We PROBABLY won’t need this, but we have SO much extra room in the car, I think I’ll just take it anyway.” You never know what’s going to happen when you travel with kids, but you can rest assured if you don’t take it with you, you're gonna need it.

You would think, seeing as how my kids are strapped in their seats with a five-point harness, that it might be a vacation of sorts. No hitting, no pooping in the sink, no rifling through Mommy's makeup. Sadly, that is not the case. One particular road trip to Alabama to visit our families stands out in the O’Bryant Road Trip Hall of Shame.

We were scheduled to leave on a Thursday afternoon, and Zeb was to get off of work early and pick up our rental van. I did have sense enough to know that my three children were not capable of sitting next to each other in the back seat of a Toyota Highlander for nine hours without someone's blood being shed. Zeb was supposed to get off work at 3:00pm and we were going to load up and head to Alabama. This would have us getting to Birmingham somewhere around midnight. But Zeb didn't get off work until 5:00pm so when he went to pick up our van they had given it to someone else.

According to the manager, who really wished he wasn't on the phone with me, “Our company does not
reserve
cars.” He had no logical explanation for the email in my inbox that read “Email confirmation for your rental car reservation.” Someone
finally
showed up at our house with a van at 6:30pm, three and a half hours after our planned departure.

“I hope that fool has somebody coming to pick him up, because I’m about to load this van and honk and wave when I back out of the driveway.” I told my husband as we buckled all three kids into car seats.

We ended up leaving at 7:00pm. By 10:00pm that same evening, three full hours after we left, we were approximately fifty miles from our house. We had stopped three times and Zeb was running a fever. If you aren't great at math that averages out to about sixteen miles per hour. I had bought a bottle warmer for the car that got lost while we were packing, so we were now stopping for the fourth time to heat up a bottle for Sadie.

As soon as we pulled into the parking lot of the gas station Aubrey yelled, “I GOTTA PEE!”

Zeb took the bottle inside to warm it and walked Aubrey to the bathroom. I plucked Sadie from her car seat and started to nurse her. As soon as Zeb and Aubrey were out of sight and Sadie was latched on, Emma announced, “Mommy, I gots to potty. I gots to potty WEALLY bad!”

“Emma, just go in your pull-up, baby,” I told her. “No, I NOT BABY, I big gull Momma. I not pee-pee pull-up. I pee-pee potty!”

I refrained from banging my head against the dashboard, but just barely. This same child will pull her panties down and pee in the floor
beside
the toilet at home, and she can’t pee in a pull up just this
once
?

“Honey, you’re just going to have to hold it until Daddy gets back.”

Zeb walked back to the car, handed me the bottle and tried to get in.

“WAIT! Emma has to go.”

He took a deep breath, glared at me with glassy, feverish eyes, unbuckled Emma and headed back inside.

I was quite happy to keep my seat in the car as Zeb escorted the girls back and forth to the restroom. Because taking a toddler to a gas station bathroom is the fifth circle of hell. It doesn't matter how many times you try to explain proper bathroom etiquette to a preschooler. They are physically incapable of keeping their hands to themselves, and while you’re busy having a panic attack they are working as hard as they can to discover a new disease to keep the scientists at the CDC busy for the next ten years.

It usually goes something like this: “DON’T TOUCH THAT! SQUAT, BABY, SQUAT… NOOOOO, DON’T SIT ON IT! Aubrey, QUIT touching the little trash can!!! That’s for grownups! I know it's just your size but it's not for you! Nooo! Stop, stop, stop! Emma, get off the floor. Don’t flush with your hand, use your foot! STOP!!!!”

Then you get to do the public restroom squat and try not to pee all over yourself, while you continue to try to keep the kids out of the ‘little trash can.’ In the meantime your thighs are shaking and burning because you haven’t been to the gym since your second kid was born and this is the best workout you are going to get for months.
Finally
, you get to wash one kid’s hands while trying to keep the other one from touching even more disgusting stuff. It’s a vicious cycle.

After sitting in the car for the better part of thirty minutes, I had a brain wave — maybe my first one of the day. When we loaded the car we had put Aubrey and Emma in the “way back,” and Sadie in the middle bucket seat. But Aubrey and Emma kept dropping stuff so I would have to climb in the back, over all our bags and toys and coolers and hand them things, and of course about the time I would sit down, they needed something else.

Sadie had been fine up to this point, but I realized that for anyone (meaning me) to feed her, I would have to either kneel beside her seat or lean across the entire van. This was not appealing to me
at all
, seeing as how I had developed tendonitis in my right arm from carrying Sadie and nursing while cooking dinner, bathing my kids, driving (okay, so not while I was driving) but you get the idea, too much multitasking! I realized that the big girls needed to be in the middle seats so they would be closer to us, and Sadie should be in the "way back" so someone could sit next to her, feed her, and sleep while the other parent was driving. You cannot
imagine
how thrilled Zeb was when I suggested this after his third trip to the bathroom. But, trooper that he is, he took all three car seats out and rearranged them, while his teeth were chattering with fever.

I pulled out of the parking lot as Zeb climbed into the third row of seats with Sadie and popped some ibuprofen (from a box full of medicine that he asked as he was loading the car, “Do we really need all of this medicine? Nobody is sick.”) He propped his head up on a pillow and said, “Don't stop until we get there.” Yeah, no problem — only 600 miles to go and you're not driving.

It’s important to note here that I’m
seriously
directionally challenged. And even though Zeb bought me a GPS for Christmas, I still get lost on a regular basis. As a matter of fact, when the little GPS voice says “recalculating,” Aubrey will say, “Awww man, are we lost
again
, Momma?”

Where were we? Oh, yes. Back to the road trip (see I told you I was challenged…) As I was driving along following directions from the voice in the magic little box, suddenly the GPS directed me off the interstate through a very rural area of South Carolina. We were in the middle of nowhere driving a route we have never driven before. It's always been all interstate, all the way. I felt like Michael Scott driving his rental car into a lake because the little voice in the GPS told him to. I was worried this wasn’t actually a short cut but I didn’t want to wake anybody up. I figured eventually I would get there, and Zeb wouldn’t have to know I was lost
with
a GPS.

Aubrey was the only one awake and she was totally stressing out because she could hear me talking to the GPS. I was stopped at a stop sign, it was a three way stop and I had two choices: 1) Turn right. 2) Turn left, but the automated voice said, “Take a left in twenty feet.” I was
at
a stop sign. I couldn't drive twenty feet unless I was going to drive straight through the barbed wire fence in front of me. I had to turn first and I had no idea which way to go. I needed to know what to do
right now.