Weekend Lessons

I've learned a few things this weekend.  Or maybe a more accurate statement is that I remembered a few things this weekend.   


#1.  Shoe shopping with three boys is miserable.  I gave them the standard lecture before entering the store.  NO tag.  NO hide and seek.  NO nuthin’.  Just try on shoes and get out.  I made an initial tactical error in allowing William to walk instead of using a cart with a stroller on the front.  That lasted about 20 second.  I turned around to get a cart/stroller while Leo picks William up like a sack of potatoes and carries/drags him over to me.  We got a stroller and he proceeded to drag his feet on the floor in front of it to continually slow our minimal progress. We finally made it to the shoe department.  Our problem is either that they hate all of the choices or they just want the first one they see.  I’m walking back and forth between Will climbing out of the cart (with the broken buckle) and the boys trying on shoes.  Leo insisted on a pair of orange and blue shoes.  Ugh, Auburn colors.  I was not impressed.  He did it just to tick me off.  He hates Auburn.  William is standing in the stroller with one foot perched on a rack of shoes.  I just left him there.  He’ll figure it out.  Justin was getting hungry so he just grabbed the first red pair he could find.  Justin puts his shoes on and immediately says “they slide off my feet a little bit.”  We have a lengthy debate on buying shoes that he very clearly just said do not fit but he insists on getting because they don’t have another size and he is too hungry to try on more shoes.  I give in.  I give Leo one more chance to pick something other than Auburn shoes, but I’ve lost that battle too.  Then we get out to the car and everyone immediately puts on their new shoes.  The car was still in park when Leo says that they hurt his feet.  We.  Just.  Bought.  Them.  I am reminded that shoe shopping with three boys is miserable. 


#2.  Flexibility was never my strength.  My body is old and my flexibility is at an all time low.  I’ve taken up yoga/pilates again.  It is clear to me now that I always relied on sheer talent, strength, and determination to have whatever minimal success I did have in my gymnastics career.  Not flexibility.  No, no, no.  Not flexibility.    


#3.  My children have potty mouths.  Seriously.  It’s bad.  It’s embarrassing.  I realize this is and will continue to be a part of raising our boys.  But when one is telling a kid we just met that he “sucks balls” followed by “not the private part balls, but like a baseball” and the other one is telling peers that spelling S-H-I-T is just as bad as saying it, I would like to crawl into a hole (and scream cuss words). 


#4.  I am much better at mini-golf than everyone else in my family.  I kicked their butts today. 


#5.  Toilet bowl cleaner comes out of quilts.  A pale yellow quilt, at that.  In a moment of stupidity I left it sitting on my bed while I screamed at the top of my lungs at my children so they would stop wrestling, crying, punching, and dragging each other around the living room.  Then I got completely distracted with my discipline efforts and brought them all into the bedroom for a good ol’ fashioned lecture.  Unfortunately I forgot about the toilet bowl cleaner I had set on the end of the bed.  It had fallen over and leaked out through the quilt, sheets, and mattress cover.  Super.  Perfect way to end a long weekend.