Leanna Kay

I got the early morning wake up that every parent dreads.

"Mom, I uh..." Lauren said as she leaned over my side of the bed and starting making those retching sounds that are always followed by something not so good. She didn’t get the "don’t feel good" out before I got a wake up that should be reserved for prisoners of war - or parents. Same difference.

Why is it that a sick child will pass a toilet and five wastepaper baskets to make it to a parent’s bedside? And why is it that a sick child always ends up on Mom’s side of the bed? Do dads lack the puke homing devices that seem to be attached to a mother’s mid-section?

I stumbled out of bed and cleaned us up. And then I did what any sensible mother would have done in the same situation. I laid down in bed right beside her so I’d be close if she needed to puke on me again. Might as well save her the long trek down the hallway.

Okay, it’s time for you all to call the SPCA on us for abnormal cruelty to our dog. Though she whined and begged with her eyes for us to stop, we did it anyway. We put water on her fur and soaped it. Yep, it’s true. We then rinsed the soap off to remove from her body the smell she had so carefully been acquiring for the last month. I believe it was a combination of rabbit poop and dead chipmunk. But when something smells that awful, it’s hard to tell.

I’ve often wondered what goes on in the mind of a dog. I think if dogs ran the world, we’d still have places like Bath and Body Works, only there would be different scents to chose from. For example, all the fruity scents would be replaced with rotting carcass smells. Dead squirrel. Dead chipmunk. Roadkill. And the most sought after dog fragrance of all - dead skunk.

Our dog certainly didn’t appreciate the smell of the dog shampoo. Once Bob released her, she ran to the first dead animal she could find. And then she rolled in it until she was covered in the smell of recently deceased squirrel. Which is a fragrance that would be well sought after - if dogs ran the world.

Lauren and I just got back from spending quality time with my college friends and daughters. When the boys asked what we did, they were quite disappointed when I answered, "just talked."

"Just talked?" Drew asked with an expression of horror. "That’s all you did the whole time?"

"Pretty much." I didn’t add that there was wine and discussions amongst the ladies not fit for his young ears.

"Really? You didn’t do anything else?" Chris piped up, clearly convinced that we’d spent the weekend at a water park and just didn’t want to tell him.

"Nope. Just talked. That’s what girls do," I said.

"Well that’s boring," Drew commented because apparently my weekend didn’t include stimulating boy activities like running around in my underwear, belching and avoiding soap at all costs. Which was pretty much what the boys did. At least that’s what I’m guessing since they won’t tell me. Top secret boy information, I’m told.

We recently took the kids to a Civil War re-enactment. This is a place where grown men dress up and play with toy guns. They reenact battles from the Civil War, pretending to shoot and kill each other. After one side manages to annihilate the other, the corpses rise up and seek out a meal fit for the recently dead. Apparently this consists of a hot dog and a Coke from the Boy Scout’s concession stand.

During the battle, some of the men were firing really loud cannons. Lauren started holding her ears before each blast and kept asking me to tell them to stop. (All hail the power of mothers. Apparently she thought I could single handedly change the outcome of the Civil War.) We were sitting nearest to the South side. Eventually the Union soldiers advanced on the cannon shooters and shot and "killed" them. I think Lauren actually cheered at their demise.

This particular re-enactment included an actor playing the role of Abraham Lincoln. The "president" was sitting right in front of us. As a glaring example of the failings of our educational system, there was a teenaged boy who went up and asked President Lincoln, "So what side are you on?"

"Uh, the North."

"Which side is that?" the kid asked. "History wasn’t my thing."

No kidding.

At the end of the re-enactment, Chris tapped President Lincoln on the shoulder with some parting words of wisdom. "Stay away from the theater."

I think Chris’s warning fell on deaf ears. This Lincoln had no intention of going to the theater. He was on his way to the hot dog stand. Because what president from the mid 1800s doesn’t want a hot dog and a cold can of Coke?

I now have my name up in lights. Well in Lite Brites at least. Lauren spent an hour during Mother’s Day afternoon making me a Lite Brite sign that said, "I love Mom." It also included stick figures of her and me hugging.

Drew and Chris both presented me with hand decorated flower pots. Chris planted me a flower and Drew gave me wildflower seed. It was such a nice domestic scene.

For a while. Then things went back to normal.

"Mom, he won’t give me my baby."

"Mom, she’s the big baby."

"Mom, he’s a big poopy head."

Then Drew spilled his entire cup of milk - on my feet. The joys of motherhood.

Chris came home from school yesterday practically quivering with excitement.

"Mom. I have to show you something. This is the coolest thing."

This is a kid raised in a generation who can’t imagine life before computers, the internet, Ipods and cell phones. Kids of this generation are not easily excited.

So when he said, "Mom, you’ve never seen anything like this" I expected him to pull from his backpack a space age robot fully programmed to cook supper and clean up the dishes. Nothing short of amazing would dazzle a kid accustomed to the type of technology my generation only dreamed of.

He then reaches into his backpack and whips out......(wait for it)......a piece of carbon paper.

"Look, Mom!" He demonstrates the use of this space age technology by writing me a note on the back of a school paper. "Isn’t that amazing."

"Amazing," I agree. Then I tell him the story about how great grandma used to use this stuff all the time when she worked in an office in the mid 1930s. "It’s what people used to make copies before we had computers and printers."

"They had this stuff that long ago?" He looks at me as if he can’t believe what he’s hearing. Then he goes off for the next hour to play with his amazing "new" discovery.

While we are raising our kids in the Baptist faith, my brother’s kids are being raised Catholic. Every time one of my nephews hits a milestone in his faith, it raises questions for my own kids. For instance, they’ve finally understood the concept of Godparents. Godparents are adults who buy extra stuff for you if you’re Catholic. Baptists get squat. If you’re a kid, this is one of those "grass is greener on the other side" moments.

This weekend, my youngest nephew went through First Communion. Through out the ceremony, the boys kept asking me questions. I explained about the blessing of the wine and Eucharist. I then leaned over and told Drew that he wouldn’t be taking Communion in our church until he was baptized.

"In the Baptist faith, when you’re ready to accept Jesus, you get baptized by full submersion," I said.

"What’s that mean?" Drew whispered.

"Basically they dunk your head under the water."

Drew looked at me with his eyebrows wrinkled. "Who does the dunking?"

"Well the minister does," I said.

Finally he gave me this puzzled look and asked, "Well what if the minister isn’t strong enough to make my head go all the way under?"

"Uh, I don’t think you’re supposed to fight him."