The Natives Are Restless...

            My children do not tolerate isolation well.  I am trying to pace myself with setting up our new home, so I occasionally take breaks.  If  they see me inactive for more than two minutes the questions start.  “Can we go outside?” “Can we go to the park?”“Can we watch a movie?”.  Grace then always adds, “Is it snack time?”  I swear that child never does anything but think about food when she is bored.  And she is BORED.  When they are older I will be able to give them a task to do, but now at 3,4 and 7 years old, normal tasks can become dangerous.  Any cleaning tool can be a weapon, or a tool for disassembly as I am frantically trying to assemble. 

            During times like these, I fantasize about having some of those lobotomized children that can sit in front of the TV for hours.  I would settle for 20 minutes right now.  Yesterday, as I was cleaning I witnessed a zombie war, a family of very dysfunctional, whining children (none of them wanted to play the mom… hmmmm…), and hide and seek.  The only reason why I knew they were playing hide and seek was because as I was walking into the kitchen I heard a small voice say, “Hi mom,” and there was Lily curled up in an impossibly small shelf of the TV cabinet.  She had even managed to close the doors around her.  She had one of those triumphant preschool smiles, and I hated to dash her sense of accomplishment, but she was on a GLASS shelf.  I eased her out of the cabinet slowly and admonished her for climbing on the furniture, and immediately realized that if she was in the TV cabinet that the other kids might be hiding in even more dangerous places. However, they had forgotten about the game and left Lily in the cabinet to wait and figure out that they had moved on to some kind of spy game.

            While I love my kids, I am ready for school to start.  As I was cleaning the grout in my bathroom with a scrub brush and high-powered steam cleaner, I wondered how women did these kinds of chores in the 1950’s and 1960’s.  My grandmother had seven children.  How did she get anything done?  There were so many more chores too.  The clothes all had to be ironed, food made from scratch,  only ONE TV with no Netflix.  The thought is impossible.  I picture a Mad Men-esque scenario with Paul as Don Draper coming home from a long day.  He would expect food on the table, and that I would have showered.  I think I would have been institutionalized back then.   I guess now is not so bad, considering the shrieking coming from the playroom right now.  It certainly beats being expected to do my vacuuming in high heels…