There Is No Joy in Mudville

For two days, we had an involuntary fasting from the television. The kids had lost the remote.  No one was willing to look for the magic controller box thingy to make the channels reveal all their mindless glory and so they had to do without.  Mom wasn't interested in searching for it either.  I suggested that the desired object MIGHT be below the laundry that had piled up on the couch.  But the problem was, there remained the Wii and the gameboy DS and two computers so my kids were not hard up for screen entertainment. 

Still, the littles all recognized they wouldn't get a shot at the high tech stuff and trundled outside to play on bikes and experience a touch of spring.  I made dinner, silently basking in the glow of having my children enjoying the great outdoors.  Then I saw what they were doing.

One daughter had parked her bike over a large crater of mud.  Her training wheels straddled the asphault allowing her main wheel to skim the surface.  She then pedaled with all her furious four year old might sending a spray back onto her brothers and sisters who tried to get away but not before caking their white school shirts.  I banged on the window.  "No spraying mud." I shouted and went back to fixing dinner.  

Then while feeding the baby, I heard giggles and splashes and odd plunk sounds.  They were dismanteling the driveway and throwing chunks of the asphault they had broken free into the mud puddle.  I banged on the window again.  "NO Throwing Rocks! AND NO dismanteling the Driveway!" 

Unnerved, I began setting the table for dinner, mentally telling myself that I'd have to have a few shower before they ate or endure mud caked all over the kitchen.  Then I heard screams that had that touch of manic indicating they were having much too good a time.  Rocks and bikes had failed to get them sufficiently filthy such that they were now jumping into the puddle with both feet and pretending to squash grapes.

I went to the laundry pile and pulled out towels and four sets of pajamas.  I ran to the bathrooms and turned on the showers and began escorting the muddy little people in one by one.  I'd misscounted and needed one more towel by the time I was done.  Going back to the laundry pile, I picked up a terry cloth towel and there it was, the remote.  The bikes had been left outside blocking the driveway such that I had to send older kids out to restock the garage.  There was also a whole new two loads of wash awaiting as a result of outside play today, and several pairs of shoes that needed scraping. 

Putting the remote on the mantle to keep it safe, I privately vowed.  "I don't care if it's 80 degrees outside tomorrow and nature in all it's glory has burst into view.  They're going to be watching TV!"

And That's Why They Watch TV

"I don't believe in a no win scenario." --James T. Kirk.
Captain Kirk never was a Mom.  --me. 

My children can tell when I'm in one of these moods, when all screens are evil. I'll announce that I've changed the pass codes to all the televisions and disconnected the Wi-Fi except to my own laptop which has a password none of them know. In my zealous madness, I hide the remotes and batteries separately and have been known to unplug all the machines as well so that there is defense in depth against children getting to vegetate before a TV, computer or video game.


"Outside! or Homework! or Practice!" A choice of three very different hells born of boredom awaits my offspring. The older ones groan and take their pick, usually opting to get the school stuff out of the way, hoping to pacify my need to crack down with dutifulness. It's been known to work. Middles try to extract bargains. These get shot down but it does give them more stall time on starting their assignments.

Mom's dictatorial ruthless outlawing of all things on Cable, DVD's, Wii and DS never lasts long. It would be even shorter lived if those kids paid attention to the ones calling all the shots, the toddlers.

It was a warm winter day, the kind made for bike riding, for discovering the outdoors when there are no bugs and it isn't so unpleasant that you need gloves. Unloading from school, the olders scurried in for snacks but the 2nd, K and younger set pulled out the scooter and the trikes and the bikes and started drawing a road for traffic patterns.

Pleased as I unloaded the baby that they were using their imaginations and exercising and being outdoors, I smiled, filled with the pseudo virtue that comes from being a Mom, catching your kids doing something good, and having had nothing to do with it whatsoever. Inside the house, I started fixing snack. I wouldn't call them in I decided, I didn't want to interrupt the fun. That would be mean.
I fed the baby. I heard a few sounds of happy laughter. Silly laughter. By this point, my mom radar should have registered “check,” but I was still trying to pretend I was offhanded and relaxed, to bask in the coolness of having four kids outside playing, four inside doing homework, and a happy 15 month old working on solid foods.

Thwack! Slurp. It sounded like something was thrown. It sounded like something mushy hit something. More giggles. Thwack! Thwack! Slump. SLump. SLump. "WOW!" "MOMMMMM."

Racing and already knowing I'm too late, my son comes in, his white shirt doing a splendid imitation of a Dalmatian. He is covered, speckled with mud. His two sisters come after him, happy and semi-horrified respectively. They too are caked from the knees down. Squelch. Squelch. Squelch. My van is also spackled with mud balls.

A child is still playing. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" I try to just have volume, not irritation. It isn't very convincing.

"I'm making mud soup. Just like in that book." She explains. She is forking a giant puddle of mud with a large stick, stirring it to make even more.

"You're a mess."

"Oh. Does this mean I have to come inside?"

Three showers, a carwash and four loads of laundry later, exhausted, I handed my daughter the remote. "Dora the Explorer is on, channel 56. The code is 1441."