Becoming a Part-Time Empty Nester

"So you're a part-time empty nester now!" my friend Bridget joked on my youngest child's first day of kindergarten.

I laughed and told her I was surprised with how uneventful the transition was. When my son climbed on the bus on that first morning, I waved goodbye and skipped back into the house to work on my million mile long to-do list and didn't have any qualms about it. 

Everything seemed strangely fine. I seemed fine.

A few weeks later another friend asked how I was handling having all my babies in school, and when my eyes started leaking in the middle of my answer (weird!) I realized I wasn't as fine as I thought.

It's not that I don't love the morning quiet. Cleaning up the house in the morning and knowing it will stay that way for six hours is nothing short of amazing. And it isn't like my little boy has even left me yet: he still cuddles with me and laughs at my corny jokes after school like he did before. 

But still, I felt a profound loss I couldn't quite name. I finally figured it out weeks later, in line at the grocery store watching an exhausted young mom with a cart full of Gerber puffs playing peek-a-boo with her 9-month-old.

I'd been standing there staring off into space, but not her. She could fill every spare second — in fact, she had to fill every spare second — connecting with the little person who mattered most in the world. 

When you have little ones at your side all the time, you don't have to go looking for moments like that one in line at the grocery store, they find you. They're relentless at finding you. They find you in the middle of the night, they paw at you while you make dinner, they pound on the bathroom door shrieking until you let them in. It's overwhelming, because that's what motherhood is: too much of a good thing.

And for the first time in my career as a mom, I don't have access to those moments 24/7. It was once inconceivable to me that meaningful connection with my kids would require effort and planning. But here we are, squeezing it in between school and their various sports and activities.

When my kids were still little, I thought women who raved about their kids growing older were lying to themselves. They'd say how great it was not to mop up spilled milk at the dinner table and finally decorate the bottom third of the Christmas tree (with breakable ornaments, even!) and I'd think, So what? That's a sad consolation prize.

Now that I'm in their place, doing the same thing, I realize I was only half-right. Given the choice between a solo trip to the bathroom and the unconditional love and affection of a toddler, I'd choose the toddler every time. It's no contest.

But I don't get to make that choice, and it's not a contest anyway. Those older moms were just choosing to find the good in their current stage of life, whatever it was.

If I'm going to thrive in, and maybe even enjoy, my new life as a part-time empty nester, I'm going to need to celebrate the good things about where I am right now.

It doesn't come naturally to me, delighting in a life that isn't filled from sunup to sundown with hugs and kisses from a sticky 3-year-old. The joys, as well as the hard parts, of raising big kids are different.

Moms wrangling toddlers in Target, if I look a little too long or smile a little too hard when you pass by, please forgive me. I remember so fondly the place you're in right now and always will. But now it's time to move from living those days to smiling at photographs of them as the kids and I plan our next adventure together.

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What To Do With Your Kids All Day in Quarantine

What a time we live in.

Lately, my blog has seen a lot of traffic due to a sarcastic piece I wrote years ago called 20 Things To Do When You're Trapped Indoors with Small Children (#9 is 'cry,' in case you're wondering what kind of list it is.)

Though I feel bad for the parents in Coronavirus lockdown who read it looking for helpful suggestions, I hope it at least made them laugh.

But now, to get serious.

Parents are desperate for things to do during school closures and COVID-19 lockdown with their kids, so maybe I can also share a little about how we're actually handling our stay-at-home situation (beyond just crying, which is perfectly valid and I won't judge.)

How We Structure Our Days in Lockdown

As a stay-at-home mom with six kids from ages 3 to 15, I've had practice with this sort of thing during summer vacations. Of course quarantine is no vacation, but at least I knew from experience how NOT to plan out our days.

For me, being overly optimistic and scheduling every minute of the day with enriching activities (music time! craft time! quiet time!) is a recipe for disaster. It turns me into a stressed-out mess by Day 3, and I have enough of that in my regular life without adding it to my quarantine life, too.

So we came up with what I thought was a workable and flexible schedule for our at-home quarantine, which I put in a page protector and taped to the wall.

Someone immediately amended the title.

Your schedule will look different than ours, and some of the entries are specific to our family so they probably don't even make sense to you. That's fine.

What's important is that I filled in the things my family absolutely needs to accomplish every day: for us, that's meals, chores and instrument practice, scripture study, and getting ready for bed on time.

Around those have-tos, I just left blank space. That's all free time where the kids are left to their own devices, and it acts as a buffer for when we get behind schedule.

At Home COVID-19 Schedule Q & A

Q: What about school?

A: For the time being, I'm not worrying about school. I'm looking at this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to focus on family time.

Our school district is working out a plan for online learning, and when they roll it out I'll do what they tell us to do. But right now, bonding with their siblings and parents is way more beneficial for my kids than doing flash cards, so that's what I'm concentrating on.

Q: What about exercise and fresh air?

A: I try to make sure the kids go outside at least twice a day when it's not raining. I kick them out in the yard to play, or sometimes we go walking around the neighborhood, ride bikes in a parking lot, or hike on an easy trail nearby.

Taking a hiking break.

In the morning, Phillip takes some of the older kids running. I work out at home with a video, and often the younger kids join me. (Little kids + Les Mills body combat = hilarious, by the way.)

Q: What about screen time?

A: I try not to worry about how much time the kids are spending on devices as long as we're sticking to the schedule and they still get outside to play twice a day.

Instead of policing minutes, I try to make sure that the kids are:

1. not doing the same online activity for too long, or
2. using the computer to interact with each other somehow (i.e: watching YouTube videos together or building something together in Minecraft) 

A: Don't your kids fight?

A: Yes. Next question.

Q: What do your kids do during "free time?"

A: The little kids are doing lots of dress-up. My 8-year-old made everyone iPhone 11s out of cardboard and paper. My big kids are experimenting with digital art and making things out of duct tape.

Some of our other favorite social-distancing friendly activities to do are:

• Rotating toys. The kids are thrilled when I take old favorites out of the attic they haven't played with for a while. I should probably just start doing this regularly once a week.
• Playing games. Our huge closet of board games is currently a high-traffic area. We also like Space Team, a game you play together with your phones.
• Watching movies. It's fun to pick a theme and watch one a day: all the Disney classics, all the Marvel movies, or all the movies the parents remember fondly from their childhoods in the '80s and '90s.
• Sibling playdates. Each kid pairs up with one sibling to play for 15 minutes, then we rotate. It's fun to see what they come up with to do together, especially the kids who don't normally play one-on-one because of differing ages and interests.
• Baking and cooking. But not just cookies and treats. I'm showing them how to make bread, and lots of healthy snacks like whole-wheat muffins, granola bars, or energy balls. (Individually, though, because cooking with more than one kid at a time makes me crazy.)
• Pulling out those craft kits and Christmas presents they've barely touched. Tell me we're not the only family who has these. The kids don't have time in their normal life so they just forgot about them, but this is a perfect time to get them out again.
• Skype with grandparents. My younger kids get goofy when we video chat, so I'm thinking about switching it up. Maybe we'll do a virtual paint night, or eat lunch together. My kids' piano recital in April was cancelled, so maybe we'll do a Zoom recital for the grandparents instead.
• Read out loud. It didn't occur to me to keep reading with kids who can read by themselves until our librarian suggested it, but it's become a long-standing tradition that even my teenagers enjoy. Choose a book with one of your older kids and read it out loud to each other, alternating paragraphs and doing a chapter a day.
• Podcasts for kids. A few I I like are But Why?, Wow in the World, and Brains On!. A list of other ones I might want to try are here.

When even that got old, we decided to add a twist. This week every day has a theme (Mythical Monday or Fancy Friday) and everything we do has to tie into the theme.

Painting waffles with food coloring for Tasty Tuesday.

Next week we're celebrating a new holiday every day (throw a Halloween party on Monday, watch a Christmas movie and bake Christmas cookies on Tuesday.)

Q: What are the challenges of parenting through quarantine?

A: We are such heavy public library users, my kids have our library card number memorized — and it's 14 digits long. Now that the library has been closed for weeks, they regularly moan about having nothing to read.

Noise is an issue. Phillip is working from home and has a lot of conference calls, which means no one can bang on the piano or scream at those times (which is way harder for my kids than it seems like it should be.)

Lastly, it's a challenge to have absolutely zero time to myself. Who are these people saying quarantine is a perfect time to organize your garage, learn a new language, and write a book? Exactly when would I have an uninterrupted 15 minutes to focus on a project half that ambitious?

Q: Is social distancing hard with so many kids?

A: Other than the noise and the mess, I actually think having lots of kids makes being stuck at home easier. The kids have many choices for playmates so I imagine their boredom level would be a lot higher if they had fewer siblings. Trust me, I am much less fun.

—   —   —   —

As with any parenting advice you read on the Internet, take what fits into your life and leave what doesn't. This is simply a glimpse into our quarantine life and what works for us.

We parents are a stressed-out bunch right now, and we're all trying to make lemonade out of the lemons Coronavirus has handed to us. All we can do is wash our hands, do the best we can to enjoy the unexpected time we have with our kids, and cut ourselves plenty of slack.

We can do this.

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The No-Stress Way to Pack School Lunches (That Your Kids Will Actually Eat)

I used to get up on weekday mornings, stumble into the kitchen, and try to slap together a few semi-nutritional lunches while barking orders at the kids to get ready for school.

They were rushed, I was stressed, and if we were lucky I'd barely manage to throw their packed lunchboxes after them out the door as they ran to the bus stop. And then when they came home in the afternoons, I'd find half the food untouched and uneaten, and into the garbage it would go.

I didn't think too much about this system. I hated packing school lunches, but it was what it was, and this was how everyone did it, right?

One day I was talking to a friend about a completely unrelated topic, and she mentioned "Oh, my sister and I used to do that when we were packing our school lunches in the '80s..."

I was practically blinded by the lightbulb that went off over my head.

What if my kids packed their own lunches? Not only would it be less stress for me, but it would mean that they would choose things they actually felt like eating that day! I was so excited to start right away.

Developing a School Lunch Packing System That Didn't Suck

If this was going to be a truly stress-free endeavor, though, we needed an organized system. Luckily for me, organized systems is what I do. I love creating systems.

The first order of business was to make lunch-packing a thing to do the night before, not the morning of. Then there would be no last-minute "I don't have time to make a lunch!" or "There's nothing in the fridge!" or "I can't find my lunchbox!"

The second thing was to lay ground rules on what the kids were allowed to pack in their lunches. If they packed whatever they wanted it could be a disaster, so we designated bins in the fridge and filled them with approved foods. If it was in the bin, they were welcome to take it to school.

How It Works In Our House

The details are different for everyone, but I think in general a system like this one could make most people's weekday mornings run about a bazillion times smoother.

When they come home from school, my kids have a list of things they have to do before they're allowed to play on the computer: things like homework, chores, practicing their instruments, and packing their lunches.

It's just part of their after-school routine. Usually their lunches are packed and in the fridge by dinnertime. Because screen time.

What to Pack: Stocking Up for the Week

On Saturdays or Sundays, the kids and I prep all their lunch foods for the entire coming week, except sandwiches, because those get soggy. Of course I make them help.

Other than the hour or so I spend chopping, cooking, and portioning into bags, I'm not involved with school lunches for the rest of the week. (And I could spend even less time if I sent less homemade stuff and more prepackaged convenience food.)

To make sure the kids' lunches are fairly balanced, I designated three bins in the pantry or refrigerator. The rule is that the kids have to take one thing from each of these bins:

• Dry snacks. We like muffins (my favorite sneaky healthy recipes are these and these,) tortilla chips, crackers, pretzels, veggie sticks, granola bars (again, sneaky healthy one here,) popcorn, or banana bread.
• Fruits and vegetables. My kids' favorites are apples, grapes, grape tomatoes, berries, cucumbers and dip, carrots and dip, or bell peppers and hummus.
• Dairy. Sometimes we might have string cheese, yogurt, cottage cheese, or pudding. If we have ham in the fridge they like to have ham and cheese cubes skewered on toothpicks. (We also stick hard-boiled eggs in there on occasion so now they think eggs are a dairy food. Oops.)

Each lunch needs to have a snack from each bin, a drink, and a sandwich. Making the sandwich is the most time-consuming part, but it still only takes a few minutes. 

The fruit and dairy bins in the fridge. This doesn't have to be fancy to work, folks.

What Age Can You Start This?

I started this system when my oldest was in elementary school. Her younger siblings have always packed their lunches from their first day of kindergarten.

If you're not sure your kid can do it, try making a picture checklist of everything that needs to be included in lunch, put it in a plastic page protector, and hang it on the wall. Ask them to go down the list, checking off each item with a dry erase marker. They might surprise you.

Do Your Kids Complain About Making Their Own Lunches?

No! Actually, they seem to like it. They've all told me at least once how their friend's mom keeps sending them something they don't like, and they're glad that never happens to them. (And I feel for the friend's mom, who has to keep throwing that thing away every day after school!)

They like the independence and being able to invent creative new sandwiches or food combinations. And because of the system we have in place, it's not an arduous task, either. It literally takes 5 or 6 minutes a night.


Once we hit on this no-stress system of school lunch packing, our mornings changed instantly and I would never go back to the old way of doing it in a million years.

The kids like choosing their own lunches, it's less work for me, and school mornings involve at least a little less yelling. Now if only we could keep their shoes and jackets from going missing overnight, things would be just about perfect.

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Signs Your Kids Have Turned Feral Over the Summer

Summer vacation is a magical three months when kids enjoy late-night bonfires, family vacations, and endless days to play with friends and siblings.

However, it's also the time of year when 75% of all school-aged children are at risk for becoming feral. Do you know the signs?

What do you mean by "feral?"

Domesticated animals like cats, dogs, or children can, if left to their own devices for too long, return to their wild state. This is called "turning feral."

The loss of structure during summer vacation is a root cause for many children who become feral.

How do I know if my child has turned feral?

The most obvious sign that your kids may have turned feral over summer break is to look at the bottoms of their feet.

Are they completely blackened? If so, you may be dealing with a feral child.

Other causes for concern might be arms and legs that are covered in mosquito bites and scrapes, as well as sand in the hair and/or diaper. Dried watermelon juice running down the chin and neck is also a red flag.

That said, "feral" is a behavioral term and can only be properly diagnosed by asking yourself these questions:

• Does he hiss and spit when you try to get him to bathe?
• Does he pee outside more often than he pees inside?
• Is she confused about the term "meal?" Does she help herself to 564 snacks a day without regard for a scheduled "snack time?"
• Does she drop every object exactly where she is when finished using it? (i.e: craft supplies on the table, snack wrappers on the counter, piles of clothing on her bedroom floor that looks like a fully-dressed person walked in and evaporated every day of the week)
• Does he not appear to recognize his shoes anymore?
• Does she constantly demand popsicles?

If you answered "yes" to 4 or more of the above questions, your child is in need of serious intervention.

Is this condition reversible?

It depends. As with all feral animals, the extent to which you can tame them depends on the individual's age, personality, and the length of time they've been feral.

If it's only been for the three months of summer vacation, you have a very good chance of reclaiming your child.

I think my child has turned feral. What do I do now?

First, congratulate yourself on recognizing the signs! Many cases go unchecked until a feral child goes to school, where it becomes the teacher's problem.

Some of the following tips will help you re-integrate your feral child into society:

• Make them eat broccoli and dark, leafy greens
• Lure them into the shower or tub at least weekly
• Patiently explain the difference between daytime clothes vs. pajamas and swimwear as many times as may be necessary
• Threaten to shave them if they don't start brushing their hair
• Slowly phase out summer food until less than 50% of their diet is hot dogs and S'mores

As always when attempting to tame a feral animal, be prepared for some scratching and biting. We wish you the best of luck and a happy back-to-school season!

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All The Summer Camps My Kids Will Be Attending

Yesterday a glossy catalog arrived in my mailbox, full of choices for summer camp. (Okay, it actually came a month ago but this is the first chance I've had to look at the mail.)

There's basketball camp, ballet camp, and Harry Potter camp. There's cooking camp and anime camp and zombie apocalypse camp and learn-how-to-camp camp.

So. Many. Camps.

And I'm glad the options are there for parents who need it, but sorry, my kids' schedule is already jam-packed.

Here's a list of the camps my kids are going to be attending this summer, whether we like it or not:

Get Your Own Breakfast Camp

The mom who got up and made you some healthy oatmeal or scrambled eggs every morning during the school year is officially off-duty. Please see the boxed cereal in the cupboard and you know where the toaster is. You can also help yourself to the bowl of fruit on the counter. (Just kidding, that was a joke. We both know you won't do that.)

Weed Pulling Camp

Oh my goodness, the spring rain made our yard go crazy with weeds. Don't even start me on the walkways and the flowerbeds around the house. As luck would have it though, I have three extra kids (with a total of 6 hands) available for 7 extra hours a day to help me pull them all out. What perfect timing.

Get High on S'mores and Act Like a Maniac Camp

In the morning, I'm going to regret letting the kids stay up until 10 P.M. running wild with burning sticks and sneaking squares of Hershey's chocolate behind my back while we roast marshmallows around the campfire. But you bet your sticky little fingers (and face and clothes) that we're going to do it, anyway.

Bickering Immersion Camp

My kids get along well, but you're going to fight with anyone who's in the same room as you every waking hour for three months. A lot. There will be lots of eye-rolling and whining and crying. And that's just from me, pleading for it to stop.

Wearing Pajamas All Day Camp

One of the best things about summer, in my opinion, is that actual clothing is optional. My kids spend half of the summer wearing either PJs or a swimsuit. There are some days when they don't even put on regular clothes.

Put Your Dirty Dishes IN the Dishwasher Camp

During the school year my kids have three meals and two snacks a day; during the summer the kitchen turns into a 24-hour Chuck-a-Rama. If I don't know where the kids are, I can find them by following the trail of discarded plates and bowls littered all over the house. There are also 347 cups in the sink, each of them used for a single sip of water.

No, You May Not Play the iPad Camp

Summer is a magical three months when you can fill your days riding bikes, catching fireflies, and all that other 1970s fun you hear so much about. It is not, dear children, simply an opportunity to spend more quality time with Minecraft.

Stay Outside Because I Just Cleaned Camp

Our house is livable during the school year but a full-on disaster area during summer vacation. The kids help clean up plenty, but in all honesty it's just easier to kick them outside with a bottle of sunscreen and some popsicles once in a while so I can enjoy the floor not being sticky for 5 minutes.

Give Mom a Migraine Camp

If I didn't hear it myself, I would never believe the ear-splitting noises my kids are capable of producing all day long. It hums in my ears and it echoes in my brain. You know in war movies where there's an explosion near the main character and everything goes silent except for a dull ringing? Those scenes bring tears of longing to my eyes.

Mosquito Smorgasbord Camp

A few weeks in to summer, my kids are so covered in bug bites they look like they have a rare skin disease. Even if we remember to spray them down before they go play outside, there are always one or two mosquitoes that sneak in the house and attack them in their sleep.

Shut the Door Camp

Unfortunately, the kids don't care about keeping the bugs out or keeping the air conditioning in. That means while they're running in and out the door whooping like a pack of insane hyenas, I'm following them around barking "Close the door!" for a good chunk of my daylight hours.

So even though taekwondo camp and left-handed calligraphy camp sound like tons of fun, we're going to have to pass. As you can see, we're already booked solid for the summer.

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Once Upon a Recorder, Some Parents Lost Their Minds

One time years ago, we bought our then 4-year-old a recorder.

You heard me right: Phillip and I, of our own free will and choice, used our own money to buy our child a recorder and bring it home.

It was a toy we saw in the $1 section at Target, sometime near Christmas, and thought, "What a fun thing for her to play with, and it's only a dollar! Let's put it in her stocking." And so with that thought, in the cart it went.

What fools we were.

When our 4-year-old got her hands on the lovely orange plastic harbinger of doom, she asked, "What is it?"

"It's a recorder," we told her, excited. "You put it in your mouth, put your fingers on these holes, and when you blow it makes music!"

Yet, what came out of the recorder next was certainly not music.

With the vigor she'd previously reserved for blowing out her birthday candles, she emptied the full extent of her 4-year-old lung capacity into that thing and made the most unholy sound I'd ever heard.

It was like a dog whistle designed by Satan.

Our smiles began to fade as she continued blasting air into the recorder, over and over, clearly delighted with herself.

"Here, let me show you," I offered, prying it from her hands. "Blow softer, like this."

My daughter nodded eagerly.

"And if you wiggle your fingers like this," I continued, "it makes different notes!"

I handed it back to her, only to hear the demonic shrieking noise again. It turns out that "possessed teakettle" is the only sound that can come from a recorder in the hands of a 4-year-old, regardless of how much time and loving instruction you've given her.

Eventually, the recorder made its way to our attic, where toys go to die.

Fast-forward several years later, and that same child is now a 4th grader, bringing home a real recorder from school nightly to practice "Hot Cross Buns."

Life has come full-circle.

To be fair, I do see a marked improvement. She plays actual notes now, for starters.

However, the recorder is still the recorder. I've discovered that even the prettiest sound that comes from a recorder is not much better than the ugliest sound that comes from a recorder.

When she fills our house with strains from "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," Phillip and I look sideways at each other and all we can say is the same thing we said to ourselves back when she was assaulting our eardrums at age four: "At least she's cute."

Wish us luck getting through the rest of the school year.

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If Fortune Cookies Had Dr. Seuss Quotes Inside

Thanks to the public school system, my kids know two birthdays: their own and Dr. Seuss's.

With Dr. Seuss's birthday coming up on March 2nd, (I know because my kids have been bringing home DIY Cat in the Hat-style top hats and Lorax word searches for a week and a half,) I thought it was a good time to rediscover some of our old favorites and find a few new ones I'd never read before.

(This is how I came across You're Only Old Once, which was definitely written for us old people to enjoy while our kids just look at the pictures and don't know what's going on.)

I was thinking as I read that some of the lines might make really good fortune cookies. What do you think of these?

Oh, be faithful! Believe in thy butter!
-The Butter Battle Book

It sure smells dreadful, does it not?

-Bartholomew and the Oobleck

Congratulations! Today is your day!
-Oh, The Places You'll Go

There is no one alive who is youer than you.
-Happy Birthday To You

If you're smart, there's a very good chance that you'll meet soon again with your socks, coat, and pants.
-You're Only Old Once

It is fun to have fun but you have to know how.
-The Cat in the Hat

You can think about Schlopp... beautiful Schlopp with a cherry on top.
-Oh, The Thinks You Can Think

There's homework to be done, Bub! So sit your pants down in that chair!
-Hunches in Bunches

There's hope, since you're not quite as deaf as a post.
-You're Only Old Once

Things can happen and frequently do to people as brainy and footsy as you.
-Oh, The Places You'll Go

Your escape plans have melted! You haven't a chance.
-You're Only Old Once

"A king," they say, "should never walk on stilts."
-The King's Stilts

You are a stupid schlupp!
-Hunches in Bunches

Go back to your beds! Get under your blankets!
-Bartholomew and the Oobleck

What would you do if you met a Jiboo?
-Oh, The Thinks You Can Think

There might be no fish. But again, well, there might!
-McElligot's Pool

Your heads will quite likely spin right off your shoulders!
-If I Ran the Circus

Today was good. Today was fun. Tomorrow is another one.
-One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

Up on top you are seeing great sights, but down at the bottom we, too, should have rights.
-Yertle the Turtle

Are you by any chance seeking a small boy with no belt?
-The King's Stilts

Even kings can't rule the sky.

-Bartholomew and the Oobleck

What do you know about tweetle beetles?
-Fox in Socks

Funny things are everywhere.
-One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

Everybody sometimes does it. Even me. And even you.
-Hunches in Bunches

You hear pretty well. You can hear ninety miles. But how far can you smell?
-The Big Brag

I'll let you know if I decide to open up an Etsy shop selling these things. You know how crafty I like to be.

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Reasons Never To Take The Class Pet Home on Vacation

Months ago, my son's 2nd grade teacher, Mrs. P, sent around a sign-up sheet for volunteers to take the class frog, Kermit, home over vacation breaks.

Clearly delirious, I thought, "This definitely sounds like something a good, involved mom would do!" and promptly signed my name in blood on the dotted line.

Before I'd really had a chance to think about what I'd done, we were trundling out of my son's classroom to our car with a huge heat lamp, a shoebox of extra bulbs and other amphibian accessories, and a big, heavy tank filled with a terrified American green tree frog and 13 nasty crickets hiding in the leaves.

If you're ever thinking about taking the class pet home, just know that it will be a terrible idea. Because...

1. You'll constantly be worrying about whether you killed it or not. 

I was bent over Kermit's tank 30-plus times a day checking to see if he was still breathing. I don't even do that with my newborn babies, you guys.

Nonstop I interrogated Phillip, as if he knew anything more than I did about frogs: "It's not moving. It hasn't moved today. Is it not supposed to move all day? Are their eyes supposed to be half-open when they're sleeping? The teacher said we'd need to feed him again on Tuesday but there are still lots of crickets in there. How much is he supposed to eat? Is he sick? How do you know if a frog is sick? Why isn't he eating?!?"

Neurotic? Yes. But what else was I supposed to do? What if I, in my zeal to be supermom, ended up murdering my son's pet?

2. Its food will totally gross you out. 

I didn't even think about the fact that it would be eating live crickets until I was in Mrs. P's classroom picking Kermit up, when it was already too late to run screaming from the room.

I could barely stand to grab the water dishes to refill them with fresh water because there were crickets near them, or on them. And it gets better — I had to drive to Petco to buy more midway through the week and then DRIVE HOME WITH THEM IN MY CAR.

Live bugs: The thing I least wanted to buy, ever.

I'm only mildly exaggerating when I say I needed to shower after I got home and then fight the urge to douse the car with gasoline and burn it.

I never even knew bugs creeped me out so much until this experience.

3. Let's talk more about its food — loose in your house. 

When I discovered a random cricket had gotten free from the tank somehow, a noise escaped my mouth that I don't think I've even made in labor. (It was only then that my son chose to tell me, "Yeah, that happens all the time in my class.")

WHAAAAAT?!?

I was jumping around screaming "Kill it! Kill it!" and Phillip smashed it with a decorative wooden block on our desk that said "Family." As in, if you start hopping around my house with your creepy roving antennae and your beady bug eyes, our family will destroy you. And we will like it.

4. Your other kids will terrorize it. 

Aside from my worries about our very curious 2-year-old figuring out how to open the cage, I had to remind the other kids constantly not to tap on the glass.

I was convinced that the stress of this combined with the noise would definitely cause the poor frog to die (see #1.)

5. You will remember why you don't own a pet, or even any live plants, for that matter. 

I never wanted to take Kermit home. I only did it because I wanted to create lasting warm fuzzy childhood memories for my son. For him one day to remember that his mom did fun things like let the class frog stay at their house for the week.

Call me heartless, but I'm just not a pet person. And even if I were, we would definitely not be getting a frog. There's the gross factor, which I've already covered. They're expensive (six crickets, a week's worth of food, cost $1.22 which means I'd be shelling out over $60 a year to feed the thing.) And most of all, they're boring. It was like Mardi Gras for my kids every time Kermit moved an inch and a half, because he typically just sat there all day appearing to be dead.

So I was basically cleaning out his stinky water dishes and getting the heebie-jeebies from all the crickets staring at me all week for my own enjoyment.


In short, I was relieved to get Kermit back to Mrs. P at the end of the week. I think he may have even been more anxious to get out of here:

If a frog can look distressed, this is probably it.

Incidentally, on the way back to school to drop Kermit off, I asked my son, "So did you like having Kermit at our house over the break?"

He shrugged at me and said, "I didn't really care."

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