We are not the Brady’s

This would be funny if it weren’t true. Well, I guess it’s funny anyway. But we live in chaos.  I try like crazy to create organization and structure, but with four kids I just haven’t mastered it.  I know God has a sense of humor because otherwise my family wouldn’t exist.  I am the poster child for adult ADD. My oldest son has Asperger’s, second child ADHD, and third and fourth children ADD.  We are a mess; a beautiful wonderful mess, but still a mess. 

We generally start our morning with five alarms going off.  All four of the children’s alarm’s going off at full blast and of course mine.  I am sure the neighbor’s children and dogs are up looking for the fire in their home.  Meanwhile, my little angels continue to sleep as if there is no blaring gong, bell or screeching rooster (my daughter’s alarm is a rooster).  My children somehow will manage to stay sound asleep until I come to their rooms and turn on lights, shake them around and sometimes literally pull them into the floor.

I’m not what you’d call a morning person.  If the world were perfect no one would speak during those first two hours of my day.  However, just as my feet hit the floor is generally when my husband begins his daily color commentary of our morning.  My husband is a morning person just not the happy kind.  He is anything but lighthearted.  He just gets up and is wide awake.  Me, I’m walking to the bathroom with one eye still shut.  I generally begin my morning listening to him grumble about how perfectly he jumped out of bed as a child and how it wasn’t necessary for his mother to tell him to get up.  I guess I am supposed to glean from this that his mother was a much better mother than I am.  Most mornings however I’m thinking his mother must have been hell on wheels if she had a six year old getting up to an alarm.

When I go to wake my ten year old son without fail he tells me each morning he is quitting school and that if I force him to go he will kick his teacher. He’s been threatening this since kindergarten.  Thus far, it is only the mailboxes on the way to the bus stop that have been brutalized.  After I pull him by his ankles on the floor, I awaken my nine year old daughter. She is sick every morning.  Amazingly she acquires a variety of symptoms overnight.  Her head is killing her, her eyes are burning, her throat is sore, her stomach hurts, and one morning she was sure she was paralyzed from the waist down.  While my ten year old kicks his furniture and my nine year old whines about paraplegics being required to attend third grade, I go wake up the twelve year old.  This one is unpredictable.  There are mornings when this child actually just gets out of bed and begins getting dressed.  I generally check to see if he has a fever on those days.  Other days he is overwhelmed by the middle school drama.  He is unable to go to school because he doesn’t have the right shirt or someone failed to speak to him at lunch the day before.  I usually just tell him to get his shower and we’ll discuss it at breakfast. He’s ADHD so he will have forgotten it by then. 

As I walk back down the hallway I check to see that my ten year old has gotten back in bed as expected.  Now I tell him to kick his teacher if he wants but to just get dressed and get his little butt downstairs for breakfast.  The daughter is at this point changing clothes for the fourth time even though we picked out the perfect outfit with matching accessories the night before.  Now she is choosing to go for the street walker/hobo look with a skirt she’s outgrown and mismatched glitter top leftover from Halloween and a pair of high heels that are from a princess dress up set.  To avoid a total meltdown I must use my best negotiation skills. I talk her into pink high tops that she’s bedazzled and hope after she eats she’ll decide the skirt is uncomfortable. 

Now I head down to wake the teenager.  It is on my way to his room that I pass the kitchen and am able to catch a few of my husbands’ lovely comments.  While he continues to talk and take twenty minutes to make one cup of coffee I go downstairs to wake the star of the morning.  The teenager.  My oldest son has Asperger’s Syndrome so life with him is always interesting.  He has now been lying in bed for twenty minutes with a light on (set on a timer) and his alarm at full blast.  If he is actually in his room and in his bed in the morning I have one small victory in this battle.  He tends to wander the house at night and sometimes sleeps on a chair or couch instead of in his bed.  If he is in his bed and there aren’t cheetos or cookies stuck to his face I feel someone should give me a ribbon or acknowledge in some way that I am mother of the year.  However, on the days he has food stuck to his face or body he is easier to get out bed.  No one is thrilled when they wake up and realize nutter butter peanut butter cookies are smeared across their face and back.  He gets up on those days and goes straight to the shower, which makes it tempting to leave a package of cookies on his night stand each evening.  

The two or three days that he’s not covered in food I have to pull and tug and shake  and scream before he eventually sits up.  Sans food on his face he then must go through a long stretching routine.  I impatiently wait thinking of all the things I need to do. Once that is complete he will go and lie down in the shower and go back sleep. 

With the water running on the teenager, I head down the hall saying a small prayer that he will not drown in the tub and I begin to get breakfast.  Of course, no one has made it down yet so I slightly raise my voice so the children upstairs can hear me.  I let them know they need to be at the table in five minutes so they won’t have to rush through breakfast.  I usually hear some strange mumble in the background about, “how is anybody supposed to be able to make coffee with all the yelling going on.”  Of course I call again in two minutes to let them know they need to come on.

  Meanwhile, hubby has almost accomplished the grueling task of making a cup of coffee.  This arduous task nearly done he picks up the pace with the color commentary.  Just in case I or any of the children who have made it to the kitchen have forgotten from the previous morning, he reminds us how perfect his family was when he was a child.  His mother never had to ask him twice to get out of bed (wait I thought she didn’t even have to ask once).  His bed was made military style and he was dressed with his shirt tucked in and books at his feet when his precious mother laid a freshly prepared hot breakfast in front of him. Meanwhile, I am telling my kids we are out of milk so they can have dry cereal or Oreos with kool-aid.  The twelve year old is writing “nerd” with cereal and pointing at his Dad so I’m deleting the dry cereal option.

As the younger three eat their breakfast it is time for me to tell the teenager to wake up before he drowns.  It is then necessary to have him stick his hand out of shower so I can put shampoo in it.  We went through a horrible phase of not actually washing the hair and then for a while he just put the shampoo in his hair and touched his palm to his head and got out of the shower.  When at breakfast each morning I discovered a glob of shampoo on the side of his head I realized he need to be told/reminded to actually move the shampoo around on his head and then rinse it out.  As he washes and rinses his hair I head back to complete the breakfast routine. 

My husband is now lecturing the children on the need for daily vitamins and fiber – the ten and twelve year old have poured the vitamins on the table and are trying to make ugly pictures with them.  As I take the vitamins away from the boys my husband begins the “you need a haircut” sermon.  He usually can work in two sermons while the younger kids choke down breakfast.

 Inevitably, there is an issue at the table.  Someone has looked at my daughter wrong; someone has bumped another’s chair, kicked under the table or called another a baby.  Thus, the arguing begins. The ten year old generally jumps up and refuses to eat if “he” or “she” is going to be in this family.  As I settle the argument and begin instructing kids to get back packs and shoes, we are then told about how my husband never argued with his siblings.  As I yell down the hall for the teenager to hurry up before he misses the bus, it is time for Dad’s “I always knew where my shoes, coat, backpack, etc” sermon.  Generally, one or two of younger kids has misplaced something and we must begin looking for it.

  We know to begin looking for misplaced things because we can hear the bus when it pulls onto the street behind us.  It is then that the children realize they are actually going to school and should therefore try and have the things their teachers expect.  As we scramble and run through the house looking for folders and remembering we have no lunch money the teenager will emerge.  He then needs to be told to eat breakfast with the free meal kids at school because he has no time to eat at home.  Then he has to be told to turn his shirt around because it’s on backwards or inside out.  He will then sit in a chair and stare.  The nine year old needs assistance with her shoes because she can never get the laces balanced and tight like Mom can.  Now we hear how my husband knew how to tie his own shoes while still an embryo. 

After the nine year olds shoes are handled I can generally get one or two of the children out the door with everything they need.  They know to walk towards the bus very slowly in order to give the others more time.  The third child has usually found the missing book or shoes at this point and is headed out door while his father explains how he never lost anything in his entire life and proper organizations would lead to success, but loss of a library book has doomed the child to a life of selling illegal drugs or perhaps running a pawn shop as a front for a drug smuggler. 

The teenager has usually managed to find his shoes and has begun putting them on.  Of course, he wears no socks, so he gets the “your feet will smell and you will be a pariah of society” sermon.  The teenager has forgotten how to tie his shoes again, but with the bus waiting there is no time for a lesson so I just do it.   As the husband completes the sermon, we manage to get out the door and the teenager runs to the waiting bus.  Next year when the teenager goes to high school he will need to leave earlier than the others.  Will that make it easier?