Warm-Weather Woes

It's the first day of spring! Oh, the awesomeness! My windows are open, I can hear the birds singing (well, kind of faintly, over the noise of squabbling and Nick Jr. and the dog and the washing machine), and there are buds on the trees.*

*Ha! Speaking of buds, I totally just remembered that I dreamed about going fishing in the dark last night, and pulling out a backpack full of soggy marijuana stashed in empty paper towel rolls, and taking it with me to an Applebee's where I waited nine hours, without complaining, to be served. How random!

Anyway.

I'm so excited for the warmer weather because that means no coats! No boots! No mittens! No hats! It means just saying, "Okay guys, get in the car," and not having to stop and bundle everyone up first. Because when you have three kids with assorted sizes of outerwear, finding everyone's everything and helping put it on is a huge pain in the ass undertaking. Which is why I am a terrible mother and rarely let my children play outside in the winter. Once I dress them in layers of clothing and the coats and stuff, inevitably someone has to pee, or has an itch underneath his this-or-that which must be scratched. By the time they take care of the problem and re-dress and get bundled and ready to go out, it's been forty-five minutes and the neighbor kids who are waiting to play have gotten cold and gone inside.

I guess it's not too much less of a pain to send them outside even in the warm weather. I wish we had a fence and I could just be like, "Hey, go out and play!" but I can't. We don't even have a swing set, so I have to go out with them and keep everybody out of the street and the flower bed and the creek that runs through our back yard. Which pretty much rules out sitting there with a book, chillin'. Booooooo.

And then there's still the issue of getting them dressed, because as y'all know, my children are nudists. Yep, even the two-year-old, who can now (proudly) take his own clothes off. Since it's not quite shorts-and-flip-flops weather, there are still jeans to snap and zip and socks to struggle with and shoes to tie. Even if I hurry, all this takes at least fifteen minutes.

There's a little boy in the neighborhood who comes by with his grandpa sometimes and rings the doorbell, asking if my kids can play. That's nice and all, but what they don't realize is, it's not a quick process. It's not like I can just say, "Yeah, sure!" and send them out. First of all, I have to go out with them, because proper etiquette dictates that I can't just shove them out the door for the grandpa to watch. Which means I myself have to be dressed, wearing a bra, generally presentable to the outside world - and not doing anything important, which is like, never. Then there's the matter of getting the boys all ready.

The other day the kid came by right at naptime. Two of my three boys were asleep. I wasn't going to even answer the door, but then Cameron rushed up to the window and was all, "Hey! There's a kid with a Scooby Doo shirt who wants to play!" in his unnaturally-loud voice. Fortunately I was wearing a bra, so I went to the door. I explained that, sorry, it wasn't a good time for the boys to play since two of them were sleeping. Which made Cameron upset, and he began to cry. Loudly. In the meantime, both the dogs decided to squeeze past me and run out into the yard. And when they run outside, they run. Like, away. Irritated, I ordered Cameron to stay in the house and not to open the door, and I ran out to chase the dogs down. Which meant running down the street, like four houses down. Hugely pregnant. In my bare feet. While leaving my kids in the house by themselves. Crouching occasionally like an idiot and yelling, "JoJo!" at Josie in that ridiculous falsetto voice that she loves. It took me like seven minutes to wrangle the dogs back into the house, by which time Cameron's superloud bawling had woken up his brothers, who were upset because I was gone. And I was having contractions like crazy.

Ugh.

I was polite, but it was all I could do not to yell, "See! This is what happens when you just randomly ring my doorbell!" Because it is. This is not an exception, but the rule. Something like this will happen every time someone comes to the door unexpectedly - the dogs will try to make a break for it and the kids will go crazy. Or I'll have to yell at them to stay away from the door because they will totally come down there pantsless or whatever. (I know this because we once accidentally traumatized a Chinese delivery dude.) I know it's irrational to blame that on someone else, but it would just be so much easier if no one ever stopped by unannounced.

... Not even in spring.