September 15, 2008

Weepy Webelos

Porter heard that the local scout chapter was looking for new members. Whoever leaked the information knows how to capture a boy’s interest– Porter came home chattering about making a car for the Pinebox Derby, earning badges for shooting, and camping at the Talladega Super Speedway. Bill took both Drew and Porter to the informational meeting and they were instant scouting converts. I drove them to the Boy Scout store to purchase their outfits, which consisted of khaki skirts, olive pants, a jaunty plaid kerchief and assorted patches denoting their den and pack and so forth that must be ironed or sewn on. Porter is extremely pissed that ten days have gone by and I haven’t managed to attach the patches to the shirt yet. He has plans to earn every badge possible in record time.

Last Saturday was the first official Webelo scout outing. (Webelo is the rank below Boy Scout, I believe. Bill told the boys that it stands for “We Be Loyal Scouts” which is flat out wrong; it’s “We’ll Be Loyal Scouts” which of course is grammatically correct. Keep in mind, though, that Bill believed until law school that the Preamble of the Constitution began “We da peoples,” and you can forgive his mistake.)

We were to meet at 2pm sharp at the state park for the Top Gun competition. Because Bill would be coaching soccer and then heading to work, I was the designated Webelo parent for my crew. Porter was beside himself with excitement. The boys have been shooting all sorts of guns when they visit Bill’s parents in Auburn, and last weekend Porter proved to be adept at shooting skeet. He wondered aloud whether he’d get a patch if helped other scouts who were having trouble handling a gun.

Saturday was sizzling, and after the soccer game the boys were already red and sweating as they piled into the van. They changed into their scout uniforms as we drove down the expressway. Once we entered the park, Drew grew queasy and we had to stop twice so he could throw up before we reached the Top Gun site.

The competition was already running an hour-and-a-half late by the time we showed up.  While we waited, a Scoutmaster wearing full regalia gave us confusing instructions about what we were to do when we took our places at the range. Each boy had three large targets with circles on them. The targets were fasted on a line vertically with clothespins and the boys were to shoot at the bottom one in the prone position, at the middle one in the sitting position, and the top one in the standing position. Each Webelo also had a sheet of paper with one big target on it. The Scoutmaster told us that each boy should first take five shots at this sheet to establish the pattern of the gun, which I interpreted to mean whether it was shooting a little high or to the right.

At 3:45 our guys proceeded to the range and I saw why I hadn’t heard any shooting. In front of us were the tiniest BB guns known to man. If you thought it was a good idea to buy your four-year-old a BB gun, this would definitely be the size you’d want. They looked like they were manufactured before the Vietnam era, and may have had a small role in that war as well. I’m no gun expert, but I know a worn out gun when I see it.

No matter. The men running the range were all about gun safety, and rightly so, although it was hard to reconcile their stern admonitions with the sad weapons that lay in front of us. After we’d all been thoroughly briefed on safety goggles (TO BE WORN AT ALL TIMES), cocking the gun and chambering the BB for your Webelo (OF COURSE I CAN DO THAT YOU MORON EVEN THOUGH I HAVE TITTIES AND NO PENIS), and the fact that we had twenty minutes and no longer to shoot at the paper and three targets (BECAUSE WE’VE SCREWED UP ALL DAY AND YOU GUYS ARE PAYING FOR OUR TARDINESS) it was time to commence.

There was one snafu, which I pointed out to the Scoutmaster.  I had two Webelos to manage, while everyone else had one. The Scoutmaster was completely bumfuzzled by the fact that one mother might show up with two children, and had I been forewarned of the situation, I certainly would have dragged Bill along with me. However, there were a number of Scouts wandering the grounds with no discernible duties, and I was sure the Master would motion one over to run the drill with one of my boys. Instead, he told me I could do both twins at the same time, although we wouldn’t be given any extra time to finish our shooting. In essence, Drew and Porter would be given ten minutes each while the other scouts got twenty. Nothing I’d seen so far led me to believe the Scoutmaster had an ounce of flexibility or humanity so I took the deal.

Now is the part where I must explain that Drew and Porter and I are fabulous at working out compromises and systems. We’re way past the point where multiples are horrifically hard work all the damn time (see ages 0 to 4) and into the finer points of sharing and rotating and working things out. So having less time than the other kids didn’t freak us out immediately; we just needed a couple of seconds to create a plan to deal with it.

I turned to the twins and told them we’d be shooting twice as fast as the other kids, but that was no big deal since they’d been shooting a lot lately and would certainly be able to hit the three targets and paper in ten minutes. I told them we’d rotate positions and showed them where the non-shooter was to stand.

“QUIT TALKING, MOM!” the Scoutmaster yelled at me.

“My boys need to know the plan if they’re going to be speed-shooting,” I told him. I might as well have been talking to the clouds.

“Scouts ready, and FIRE!” And the exercise began.

I started with Drew. He stood and fired at the paper, then got into the prone position and fired at his lowest target. I had two jobs: to cock the gun and chamber the bullet and to count his shots to ensure that he took no more than ten shots at each target. I was going to have him do all his targets, then switch to Porter, but the Scoutmaster was behind me and shouted, “ROTATE THE BOYS NOW!” so I had Drew retreat to the watching spot and motioned Porter to come up to the gun.

“My safety goggles are blurry,” Porter whispered.

“We’ll trade them with Drew’s,” I said. “Turn away from the range.”

I quickly yanked Drew’s goggles off and switched them with Porter’s. “NOT A GOOD IDEA, MOM!” the Scoutmaster shouted.

“Better idea than a boy shooting when he cannot see,” I muttered. “Ignore him and shoot, honey,” I told Porter.

“LESS TALKING AND MORE SHOOTING MOM,” the Scoutmaster said.

I turned around. “Listen, Sir. These boys have to rotate safely if they are going to rotate between each target, and if they are going to do so, we have to have a plan, and that requires me to communicate with them. By talking.”

I turned back around.

“Ok Porter, you do the white sheet first. That’s just to see the pattern of the gun, so take a couple of shots and then we’ll get to the targets.”

He did, and we concluded that the gun was shooting low and to the right.

Porter finished his prone position target, and then I had him go ahead and do his sitting position target since the Scoutmaster had momentarily disappeared and I could save time by avoiding a twin rotation.

Then Drew did his sitting and standing targets and Porter finished his standing target. There were two other boys still shooting when we finished.

“My God,” the dad next to me said. “I don’t know how you handled counting all that for two boys, much less with the Scoutmaster yelling at you.”

I was feeling pretty triumphant myself. It was short lived.

As we stood in line to have our targets scored, I realized that the Scouts at the scoring table were carefully scrutinizing the white sheet of paper, the one we’d been told was to be used to establish the pattern of the gun. I jostled closer, and saw that the Scouts were adding the numbers on the target, and telling the kids who’d made a thirty-five or higher to take the paper to the red tent and get a badge.

I sidled back in line and glanced at Drew’s white paper. He’d hit it five times and had a forty-one. He’d get a badge. I looked at Porter’s. I remembered telling him to take only a couple of practice shots and sure enough, he had two shots in the ring right outside the bullseye for a total of eighteen.

I didn’t tell the boys what was about to happen. I let it all play out in front of the scorekeepers, who watched as Porter’s lip trembled and he wept.

“I didn’t know that was for a patch,” he mumbled. “I only shot at it two times.”

He was right. I’d encouraged him to take only two shots at it, because NO ONE had told us that white sheet of paper had anything to do with a patch. I hugged him tight while we walked with Drew to the red tent to get his patch.

It was a tough day for mothering. When we got home I congratulated Drew on earning his badge, and then told him that Porter was extremely upset that he hadn’t gotten his.

“He didn’t know that the white paper was for the badge, Mom. I didn’t know either. I just took five shots and hit it, and he didn’t shoot it five times because that man was yelling at us.”

“Well, it would really make Porter feel better if you say that when we go inside and tell Daddy what happened.”

We had a five minute pity-party in honor of Porter and the injustice of it all, and then we gorged on food Bill had picked up from the Greek Festival.

It will be a cold day in hell before I handle another Webelo outing.

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One Year Ago in My Tiny Kingdom: Sexy Singers, But Can They Spell?

September 4, 2008

Science Gone Astray

I’m all about encouraging the boys’ love of science.  Sadly, they’re not satisfied with the science they learn at school, because television has taught them that real scientists use test tubes and Bunsen burners, both of which are tops on Porter’s Christmas list.  A Bunsen burner = fire and last time the boys played with fire, (that I’m aware of) a parakeet died.  Here’s hoping he adds more to the list in the coming months.

Porter has spent the last year concocting potions in his bathroom out of non-approved materials such as Pert, dirt, mouthwash, shampoo, rocks, toilet paper, and other household objects stolen from my kitchen.

This may look like a damn fine mess to you, as it did to me. Scissors, aluminum foil, the plastic case from an iPod, murky water– where’s the science in this?

“It’s a model of the Bermuda triangle, and the blue water is the ocean around it,” Porter said.  “Can we go to the Bermuda triangle?  But lots of people don’t come back, so we should take guns and parachutes and food and cell phones.”

“We’ll see,” I said.  “But we’re not going anywhere until you clean up this bathroom.”

His scientific method was cutting into my grocery budget.  He especially enjoys producing bubbles and relies on bathroom items intended for hygienic purposes to generate them.  Once I came home just hours after a trip to the Dollar Store and found that he’d confiscated an entire cabinet full of shampoo, which he was about to pour into the bathtub to create a tidal wave.

I put an immediate stop to that.  Porter needs as many cleaning products on his body as he can apply in one shower.

In a rare instance of exceptional parenting, I bought Porter a book full of science experiments and the supplies needed to perform them, in hopes that I could cut down on our toiletry consumption and steer his investigations in a more scholarly direction. Sandwich Bag Science contains 25 experiments that require vinegar, baking soda, straws, dried lima beans, Borax, and not a single drop of acne wash, conditioner, mouthwash or toothpaste.

Drew became equally obsessed with the book, and Porter and Drew ran through the first ten exercises in no time.  I restricted their activities to the driveway.  All was well until yesterday.  Finn was home sick, I cleaned up a bit, and made a horrifying discovery in Drew’s bathroom cabinet.

I swirled the mixture around a bit but was unable to identify any ingredients, except the minty smell of mouthwash.

Porter disavowed all knowledge of the stuff, and proclaimed that he had moved on to sprouting lima beans. Drew squirmed under interrogation and finally confessed that he might have put some powder from Porter’s rock tumbling kit, toothpaste, blue Powerade and a squirt of Neutrogena face cleanser into the plastic cup.

“Mom said you can’t put anything you put on your body into your science experiments,” Porter said with the authority of a ten-year-old who knew that practice was so last week.

“Shut up,” Drew said, with the attitude of a kid with a couple of bullies in his class.

I was going to impose discipline, but I decided that being scientists was so much better than the alternative.

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One year ago in My Tiny Kingdom: They Didn’t Analyze The Men So I Will

August 15, 2008

Just Wondering

Porter: “Mom, how would the world be different if baking soda and vinegar didn’t fizz up when they’re combined?”

I had no answer for this.  Your thoughts are welcome.

By the way, Porter has learned to fashion things out of balloons.  His “Cross-Eyed Training Hat” is pictured above.  He’s looking at the camera in this picture, but if he were actually training himself to be cross-eyed, he’d focus on the orange phallic balloon just in front of him.

He says it takes his average customer (Drew) about 30 seconds to learn to become cross-eyed using his technique.  Look for the Cross Eyed Training Hat in stores by Christmas!

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Three years ago in My Tiny Kingdom: Crochety Mom

July 22, 2008

Use Your Nuts Wisely

I’ve turned into a teenager.  I developed a large pimple on my chin on the way home from BlogHer and then slept until 1:30 the next afternoon, aided by pharmaceuticals.  I realized I’d been traveling too much when I foraged in the pantry for something to eat and discovered this:

I ate cereal instead.

I tried to explain BlogHer to Bill, as he was interested in knowing where I’d been with a thousand women (and some men) and what we’d been doing in San Francisco.  I told him that we discussed blog platforms, content syndication, social media, monetization, and I would have gone on but at that point his eyes glazed over and he said, “I don’t think I know you anymore.”

I don’t feel a huge need to blog about the conference- you can google BlogHer 08 if you want the dramatic details.  I will say that it was odd yet exhilarating to meet people I’ve considered friends for a long time yet never actually seen, like Busymom, Mom to the Screaming Masses, Playgroupie and Headless Mom.  I made other friends too numerous to mention, including  Shannon, Crib Ceiling, Notes From the Trenches, Friday Playdate, Goon Squad Sarah, and more.

I was showered with free gifts during the weekend, but the most intriguing was called Soap Nuts.  A lady at a booth handed them to me at a party where alcohol was being consumed, so I concluded that they were more Nuts than Soap– maybe a nut that has a mouthwash effect or something.  That was not the case.

Soap Nuts are meant for washing laundry.  With that name, they’re clearly aimed at the male market, so I gathered the duo (Finn is at camp) and we put the nuts to the test.

It was not a promising start.  We opened the darling cotton bag in which they were packaged and found, well, these.

Yeah. These are the dried fruit of the Chinese soapberry tree, although they look a lot like prunes, or maybe baboon droppings.  I was skeptical that something that looked so obviously dirty could be a cleaning product, but the lady swore that the nuts contain a natural cleaning ingredient, and besides– they’re called Soap Nuts!

“You told us to say testicles, not nuts or balls,” Porter said.

I made an exception for this product, which like footballs and soccer balls has balls in its name and has nothing to do with sperm.

We put the nuts in a small linen bag.  “These stink,” Porter said.  That’s when I remembered that the woman had also given us some essential oil to sprinkle on the bag to scent our laundry if we were offended by the natural odor of the Soap Nuts.

“I’d say I’m offended,” Drew said.

I got out my stock of oils that Bill and I keep for recreational purposes, and Drew and Porter carefully sniffed each one, finally agreeing to scent our laundry with orange flower.

Green tea is nasty

It smells much better than plain balls, though.

There was nothing left but to start up the washing machine and hope for the best.

Yes, those are instructions for using the machine in the background. The boys act like they’re hard to decipher but they’re perfectly clear.

Drew still persisted in asking when we’d be through washing with soap testicles.

I suppose you’re going to want to know how the wash came out. This pink shirt was extremely grimy to begin with. It’s Drew’s favorite and my theory is that he wore it every day that I was out of town. After washing, it was marginally less filthy looking, but smelled a million times better.

I think I’ll continue using laundry detergent, but when I make the boys do the laundry they can use the soap testicles if they want, and everyone should be happy.

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One year ago in My Tiny Kingdom: Presenting YO MAMA!

June 19, 2008

Not Reassuring

The letters we get from Drew at camp are often a mixture of alarming and reassuring.

Dear Mom,

Your not aloud to have candy at camp. I miss Skittles. Also i need some cortusone really bad.

love, Drew

or

Dad,

I’ve started jumping on horses. You trot over ground poles in 2 point then jump over a pole then canter. Last nite I got sick and had 105. The nurse gave me some medisin.

Drew

He doesn’t look sick to me.
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One year ago in My Tiny Kingdom: Our House Is A Killing Field