Jumping for joy after third grade’s “Meet, Greet, and Find Your Seat” orientation.

Third grade is a turning point in elementary education.  It is the momentous year where students are considered big kids, instead of little kids.  The summer reading program involves long chapter books (as we’re currently cramming to finish Lyddie before school starts on Tuesday).  Students are expected to become more self-motivated, with the completion of projects and homework becoming primarily the responsibility of the child.

As a mother with two middle school aged children, I have already learned how hard it is to stop hovering, ensuring that every task is completed to the best of the child’s ability AND to the teacher’s expectations.

Schoolwork does not come easily to Eloise, so I am a little more nervous about loosening my grasp.

As I have been feeling nervous, however, Eloise has been ecstatically happy, viewing herself as one of the cool kids.  A few weeks ago, she approached me with a list of things that needed to be done before the start of school.  First, it was imperative that she get her ears pierced, and second, it was necessary to chop off her long hair.

I was dismayed by the idea of a haircut, loving my girls with long hair.  So I decided to approve the ear piercing in hope that she would be either satiated enough by the change in her appearance or distracted enough to forget about the haircut.

After gathering recommendations for the best ear piercing boutique, we headed off.

I really didn’t believe that Eloise would go through with the piercing, because of the previous times when she had changed her mind at the last minute and also because of her fear of needles.  When she was a toddler, Eloise cried inconsolably whenever one of her siblings received a vaccine.  One time in particular, the other three children were receiving the flu vaccine (except Eloise) and no one was crying (except Eloise).

On the way to the boutique, I noticed that Eloise had her fingers covering her earlobes.

“What are you doing?”  I laughed.

“I’ve been pinching my ears all day, so I’ll be ready for how much it will hurt,” she said, with her eyes wide open.  In my mind I could see her innocent baby face with the same clueless expression.  My throat ached to remember the sweetness.

When it came time for bravery, Eloise was prepared.  She sat in the chair, bracing herself.  Her eyes flared at the brief pain, but she never cried.  Obviously, third graders are too cool to cry.

Oh, how I lobbied to keep the lovely long hair, but Eloise was firm.  In order to have a successful third grade year, the hair must go.  She decided to donate to Locks of Love again, so how could I (in good conscience) grouse about the haircut?

I sucked it up and scheduled an appointment with a stylist.

At the salon, I took approximately one thousand photos.  Then our #@%^$ computer had a meltdown after I had filed them.

Pretend there is a photo of Eloise’s hair in the rubber bands necessary for Locks of Love.  Pretend there is a picture of her in front of the cool old house next to the salon.  Pretend to see the super cute photo of Eloise in front of our Elvis tree (grown from an acorn from one of the pin oaks that line Graceland’s driveway).

Tonight, my two favorite girls and I made three loaves of our super-special banana bread.  (I’d share the recipe, but it’s from some vegetarian health food cookbook, and you probably wouldn’t like it anyway.  However, to my children, who have been raised on wheat flour and cardboard, it’s a family specialty.)

The girls always mash the bananas for the bread.  It’s a tradition.  Those two are superb mashers.  No, expert mashers.  Nay, to be honest, they are considered mashers extraordinaire.  In fact, they’ve had a lifetime of experience.

Who cares if slimy mush ends up covering every surface within a three foot radius?  Or that cleanup takes longer than baking?

Those bananas are good and smashed.

Minor irritants are a near-constant occurrence when living with children.  The bickering, the spills, and the messes are all to be expected, along with the discovery of new pet peeves.

For years, there have been shallow hooks on the back of the kids’ bathroom door.  They are supposed to hang their towels (the ones embroidered with their names) on the hooks, rather than grabbing a new towel every day.  So the kids would hang up their towels, but because the hooks are shallow, the towels would slide off and pool on the floor, making it impossible to open the door the entire way.  Very irritating to encounter on a daily basis.

After years of dealing with this petty annoyance, I finally bought deep, sturdy hooks.  Life is simply too short to be driven to irrationality in the name of saving seven dollars.

Of course, the new hooks had screw holes that didn’t match up with the old hooks, so I needed to drill new holes.  When I went to plug in the drill, one of those clear, plastic socket covers blocked the way.  I grasped the cover on it’s thin edges and pulled.  Those suckers are nearly impossible to remove, but it finally came free with a jerk.

After hanging up the towels on the new hooks, and testing their sturdiness, I moved on to restocking the t.p. cabinet.  (It’s true.  The fun never stops for the fearless leader of the Mayhem clan.  It never starts, either.)  So with a ginormous package of toilet paper to deal with, I whipped off the child safety latch and… paused.

Wait.  My baby will be heading to kindergarten next week.  We absolutely don’t need to lock up the t.p. anymore (if we ever did).

Feeling like a rebel, and high on thoughts of a new kind of freedom, I grabbed the screwdriver.  I removed every single one of those child safety latches and tossed them into the trash with relish.

As for the plastic socket covers…  Well, they’re still covering the sockets.  Thoughts of “what if…” circled through my mind, compelling me to dig the plastic disks out of the trash.

Baby steps, I guess.  The process of letting go will have to proceed with tiny steps, in order to feel tolerable.

My kids are growing up, and the same is required of me, whether I like it or not.

For more photojournalism entries, please visit I Heart Faces.

I have a confession:

I am obsessed with organization.

Poet Robert Browning and architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe were right with their “less is more” assertations.

Less stuff equals less mess and less mental clutter.  Less stuff equals more tranquility for me.

I have been spending the past couple of weeks wholeheartedly immersed in fall cleaning (spring cleaning’s hipper, more thorough cousin).  It started with a tag sale hosted by our church.  The church requested donations, and I was happy to comply.  Before the start of school, I wanted to see what clothing the kids had outgrown and make a list of any new items needed.

And the problem escalated from there.

I have organized the entire upstairs, leading to a stack of boxes full of stuff to donate.

Eloise has been relentlessly pestering me for her own room, something that simply isn’t going to happen due to a lack of space.  As a consolation, I did agree to repaint the battered and dented walls in the bedroom she shares with her sister.  Eloise also asked for the antique washstand (that I was moving out of another room) to be added to her room, as a place to store her all-important jewelry box and other miscellaneous stuff.

So I’ve been happily spending my time patching, sanding, painting, moving furniture, and hanging decorations (as directed by the boss, Eloise).

The result is so overwhelmingly saccharine that it will make your teeth ache to look at the photos.  Here is proof of the momentary cleanliness (which ended approximately 25 minutes after the two slobs moved back in with their numerous papers of artwork, naked barbies, and random bits of trash):

Below is the extra scary photo.  The one that shows my freakish obsession with organization, loud and clear.

It is further proof that I can no longer deny the full extent of my problem.  It’s time to seek help.

One of the most-used cookbooks in our yellow kitchen is Roald Dahl’s Even More Revolting Recipes.  The pages are stained and stiff, stuck together by all of the odd substances that make up the revolting concoctions that delight my children.  The recipes are based on Roald Dahl’s famous books, such as “Wonka’s Whipple-Scrumptious Fudgemallow Delight” from Charlie and the Clocolate Factory, “Pickled Spines of Porcupines” from James and the Giant Peach, and our personal favorite, “Devil’s Drenchers” from The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me.

Still, odd recipes aside, when the 10 year old asked to be allowed to cook dinner, I wholeheartedly agreed.  {One less task for me to accomplish.}

Vincent chose to cook “Hot-House Eggs.”  He used all-natural, whole grain white bread and eggs from the neighbor’s pampered chickens.  Adding in some cut up fresh fruit, it was a fairly decent dinner.

He enlisted the help of his seven year old sister in flipping the bread.

Eloise did not think the bread looked appetizing.  {Though she ended up enjoying the finished product.}

A bit of freshly ground salt sprinkled over the top.

Violà.  Perfectly presented on a plastic kiddie plate.  Now that’s classy.

Hosted by Cecily and Lolli

Would you expect to find a registered sex offender living here?

One of my neighbors called this afternoon, sounding very worried.

She was calling to warn me that a convicted rapist had rented the house on the corner of our street.

Ironically, you may recall that I recently wrote a post titled, Common Sense Tips to Help Keep Children Safe.  While writing that post, I had looked up my address on Family Watchdog, and I had been relieved to find that there were few registered sex offenders in our general vicinity, and none within walking distance.

Today’s revelation has shattered the illusion of safety.

If my neighbor hadn’t called with the news, I would have continued to erroneously believe that our neighborhood was safe.  I had completed the search at the beginning of August and the offender registered in mid-August.  How long would it had been until I thought to check again?

Why wasn’t everyone in the neighborhood notified when the rapist moved in?  Don’t taxpayers deserve to know if there is a registered offender living nearby?

We live in a small neighborhood of twenty-something houses.  Eight years ago, there was nothing here but farmland and a little, old, ranch-style house.  Then the individual lots were sold and large houses were built.  But that little brick house still stood at the entrance of the neighborhood.

The turnover rate has been zero.  Since the houses were built, none have been sold and none have been rented.  Until the folks living in the ranch house decided to build their dream house on adjacent land, and to rent the empty ranch.

It is so unsettling to find my family in this situation.  I had believed that our neighborhood was as safe as one could be.  Our street is full of families with young children, most of the mothers at home all day, and I have a police officer living next door.  Why am I paying such an obscenely large mortgage (in the name of a decent neighborhood) to find my family living in close proximity to a rapist?!

The worst part of this situation is that the bus stop is located directly outside the rapist’s front door.  Will those beautiful teenage girls be safe as they wait for the bus?   How about when they walk home, past his house, in the afternoon?

I understand that registered sex offenders need to live somewhere, but why my neighborhood??

This new development reinforces my desire to be home and be present for my children.  Another recent post, To Work or Not To Work, That Is the Question, discussed the difficult decision whether to return to work.  But if my kids won’t be safe walking to the bus stop in an upper middle class neighborhood, then where will they be safe?

Between Mr.Mayhem’s longtime friend (the child pornographer) and my new neighbor (the rapist), I’m beginning to feel like a magnet for sex offenders.

One is never too old to enjoy playing in the sand.  Even the teen digs the beach (heh).

Visit I Heart Faces for more photos of beach fun.

I have a dilemma.

But first, please understand that I am selfishly taking about myself in this post.  I’m not judging anyone else.  Life is full of choices.  This post is intended to start a discussion so please share your opinion in the comments.

I feel as though I ought to find a job.

Our family of six lives on my husband’s salary.  We have a nice life together, in a fine house (the smallest on our street, yet still fairly large) in a safe neighborhood.

In relying on one income to support our family of six, we have given up a lot of the finer aspects of life.  I am in the cell phone dark ages.   We don’t have cable television.  We rarely go out to eat (to Mr.Mayhem’s chagrin).  We wait and save up for every purchase, except groceries.  And for those, I shop very carefully.  We have healthy, but dreary dinners.  I cook almost everything from scratch because it’s cheaper.  We do go on a yearly vacation, but we save all year to pay cash for the vacation.

My husband’s work is very stressful.  I feel guilty that he is shouldering the financial burden alone.  My meager contributions as the Chief Financial Officer for our family can only help so much.

When my children were babies and toddlers, I was so overwhelmed with survival that the thought of adding work to the equation was inconceivable.  Childcare costs for four made the idea of working laughable.  And I liked having an excuse to be home with my kids.

Now that my youngest is five and entering half-day kindergarten, I feel as though I am expected to return to work.

The brutal truth is that I don’t have a profession waiting for me.  I had my first baby at age 22, and I would now be starting over in the workforce.  Returning to college would be blissful, but how could I justify spending so much money when the educations of my four children are the priority?

There is some emotional baggage clouding the work/no work debate, too.

My mother always worked, though with the attitude that work is a four letter word.  She would have preferred to be a stay at home mom to my sister and I, but she felt forced due to financial issues and differing priorities with my father.  As a teen, I often wondered why my father didn’t attempt to understand her mindset.  Didn’t he love her enough to consider her desires?

The thought of returning to work worries me for another reason.  I am afraid to loosen the reins, so to speak, with my kids.  When I was a child, my family was torn apart through my older sister’s drug abuse.  If my mother had been more present, would my sister’s illegal experimentation have been prevented or stopped before it escalated?  Since witnessing the ugliness of addiction, a major fear of mine is that one of my children will go astray.  I would do anything to avoid that dismal situation.

Because of all of these reasons, it is monumentally important to me to be home for my children and focused on them.  I would like to greet them at the end of the school day and have plenty of energy to help them with their homework.

I just wish I could get rid of this guilt.

How are so many mothers able to gracefully balance work and family?

Stay-at-home moms, do you ever feel guilty about not contributing financially?

Work-at-home moms, it seems as though you have the perfect balance.  Is this solution really the miracle answer?  How did you find employment?

Work-out-of-the-home moms, do you feel as present as you would like in your kids’ everyday activities?  How is your stress level?

Sun is shining. Weather is sweet. Make you wanna move your dancing feet.

-Bob Marley

A bit tired of the pool, the children decided to use sprinklers, buckets, and the hose in the backyard instead.

The girls filled up three buckets with water, one for each of them and one for their brother.

I settled on a chair on the screened porch directly under the fan, where the temperature was almost comfortable.  I put my feet up, took a sip of water, and opened my library book.

The kitty quietly kept me company on the porch.

Three minutes later, the teenager came and sat across from me with his own library book.  He opened his book and proceeded to talk non-stop until the shrieking in the backyard became overwhelming.  I managed to read a few pages of my book, comprehending absolutely nothing before I had to go intervene.

The kids were jumping in and out of the buckets.  With three buckets and three kids, you’d think there wouldn’t be any arguing.  Except for the fact there was only one hose.

Somebody had the brilliant idea to make mud.

Somebody flung wads of mud at his sisters while they crouched down and made mud patties.

Just another summer day at the Mayhem household.

Hosted by Cecily and Lolli