After seeing my last post and reading that I took my kids hiking, a lovely lady left a comment to tell me that I’m “the coolest Mom ever”. Apparently, I need to set the record straight.

I am not a cool Mom. I don’t even really like kids. I mean, I love my own…and thank goodness I love their friends. For now anyway, they are all well-behaved, kind, and clean.

I think my lack of coolness around little ones started when I began babysitting at the age of thirteen. I took a Red Cross class, I took CPR, and I checked out How-To books on managing children from the local library. I was excited. I was ready!

My first job was to babysit my three year old cousin. It was shortly after Halloween, and before I arrived, this sweet little girl had ingested a mountain of Smarties. As I was helping her brush her teeth before bed she said, “I think I need to get to the toileURGH”, at which point a massive amount of vomit poured out of her and all over the floor. We were two feet away from the sink and just inches from the toilet, but she didn’t make it to either of them.

So I did what any babysitter would do. I called my Mommy.

While I heard my Mom gagging upstairs as she threw puke covered paper towels into a trash can, I watched my cousin’s dog lick regurgitated Smarties off her pajamas. Then I sat on the steps, cried, and I thought about how I would never, ever watch kids again. I would just look at them from a distance.

Just a few months later, my Mom was babysitting my nephew when he threw up at various places throughout our house. What is it with the vomiting?! The next time I was forced into watching him, I ended up walking him in circles around our neighborhood for hours…in the 40 degree chill…just so that if he spewed, I wouldn’t have to clean it up.

For a germophobe like me, runny noses, dirty fingers, boogers, poo…and vomit…are sometimes too much to handle. Throw in some back-talk and bad manners from kids you don’t know well enough to punish, and watch Momo run longingly to the nearest tall person for some adult company.

But, I did take my kids hiking. And, wouldn’t you know that as we were eating our picnic lunch, my six year old son choked on his sandwich and threw up. At least we were outside…no clean-up required.

See? I’m only cool when it’s convenient.

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Our family took a road trip today and enjoyed a five mile hike through Ohio’s beautiful Hocking Hills.

And, there was climbing…

Did I mention there was climbing?

Our five mile hike took us four hours.

When we got home I made an attempt to be funny and asked, “So, does anybody want to go for a walk?”

And, my nine year old daughter made me wish they could sell her pep-in-a-bottle, when she said, “I do!!”

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I have mentioned before that our family is highly competitive. My husband is the worst of the bunch. Coming from a family of eleven, his sibling rivalries are taken to a much higher level. When I heard there was a movie coming out called There Will Be Blood, I thought it was a documentary filmed during a family game of Boggle.

Our nine year old daughter, who used to let her friends win just to be nice, is now changing her tune. As she has gotten older and has begun to play sports, I’ve noted a real ruthless streak in her. Now, with a Wii in the house her new attitude is win first, friends second.

Yesterday she was playing tennis with her Dad when she missed a ball and, as is customary, he began to rub it in her face. He saw the end was near and before going in for the kill he asked, “Do you smell that?”

And I realized my daughter has learned the first rule of competition is knowing how to talk smack when she replied, “I smell something. But, it’s not your victory.”

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Because my six year old son has ear canals the size of a bug, and he produces a lot of wax, he has to go to the ENT roughly once a month for a thorough cleaning.

In order to be proactive about it, I am always looking for signs of wax build-up. For instance, when he starts asking, “What?” all the time, I know I need to schedule an appointment. Another indication is when worker bees start buzzing about his head.

But usually, I can see the wax. I give his earlobe a gentle pull and, more often than not, I’ll spy a gob that is screaming for me to pull it out. Though the last time I attempted to do that, I pushed it back in. Do you know how it feels to have an Otolaryngologist lecture you? I do.

So, I have to settle for pulling the lobe back to just look. I am constantly peeking in there and making comments about his ear wax.

Maybe I do it too often. Because when I was holding him the other night, he looked up at me and said, “Mom. You have some wax in your nostril.”

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