Mama Byrd

My sister-in-law Kim is 8 months pregnant with her fourth child. She’s having kind of a hard summer (go figure), so I offered to take all of the kids to the zoo today. That’s my three kids and her three kids, for those of you who are having trouble counting. As Lannie said, it sounded like a good idea until I was alone with them and realized they outnumbered me 6 to 1.

It actually went pretty well at the zoo. We took our Radio Flyer wagon, and I established the rules: 2 of the little kids had to ride in the wagon at all times (that way I only had to chase 1 at a time), and one of the big kids had to pull the wagon at all times (that way I didn’t break my back or pull a hamstring). Everyone followed the rules, for the most part, and we survived nearly 3 hours at the zoo.

That’s when I pushed it too far.

It was after 1:00, and we were all hungry, so we stopped at Wendy’s on the way home. As we were crossing the parking lot, I actually had the thought, “I am pushing my luck with this.” I was right.

They started right away with the fighting. Elizabeth and Kristine, the two oldest girls, were fighting over how many tables to put together. All of the little kids were yelling at me at the same time about what they wanted to eat. Abby, the 4-year-old, wanted french fries and a Frosty. I wouldn’t let her get a Frosty. She told me, “Mommy ALWAYS gets me ice cream.” Yeah, right. She got french fries.

I got a few dirty looks from other women in the restaurant (yes, it’s always women who give me dirty looks), but nothing I haven’t had before. We finally sat down at the table, and all seemed peaceful. Then Kristine got up to get a refill, and Elizabeth ate all of her french fries.

I was so furious– what 7-year-old eats someone else’s food? I couldn’t even offer Kristine any more food because all of the other french fries were gone. I promised her a fruit snack when we got back to the car, and I prohibited Elizabeth from getting a refill of Coke or eating anything else for the rest of the afternoon.

Wendy’s gives really good prizes in their kids’ meals– too good. The kids each received a Scene It! DVD game, and they started fighting on the way to the car about which one they were going to watch. We were 5 minutes from the house, and a smarter mom would have told them we weren’t watching anything on the way home.

Unfortunately, I’m not that smart.

We hadn’t even pulled out of the parking lot when Kristine started crying and screaming, “She pinched me! Elizabeth pinched me!” I pulled over, got Elizabeth out of the van, and asked her to explain what happened. Sure enough, she pinched Kristine when she didn’t get to hold the remote control. I thought that was primarily a male problem? Not in my house, apparently!

I made the kids change seats, drove the last 5 minutes home, and kicked myself for not taking them home without lunch!

Somehow, Jonathan and Kim have managed to take all the kids to the movies twice without incident! Somehow, I’ve never managed to get my bluff in on them. I think they can smell fear. Wait, maybe that’s sweat. We did walk around the zoo for 3 hours.

Filed under: family, kids on June 12th, 2008