Runaways

No, none of the kids ran away from home.

Yet.

Well, OK, maybe one of them did, but I was with her.

So I guess I ran away from home, too.

It was just one.of.those.days. I'm blaming it on summer. Staying up late. Skipping naps. Spending hours frolicking in the pool. But never quite getting the amount of sleep they need to compensate for all the frolicking.

Oh, you can get away with it for a while.

Until you can't.

As I told a friend the other day when she asked how our summer was going, I'm really enjoying summer days with the kids.

When I'm not wondering when the hell school is going to start.

I really do love summer, and I'm looking forward to more of it. But I'll admit it. I'm also giddy with excitement that it's almost August.

Because after August comes......September.

As it happens, today I was thinking a lot about September.

I mean, a lot.

I had great intentions for today. In truth, I have felt like a slacker mom lately. Oh sure, the kids are fed (constantly), dressed (usually), and loved (completely). They have plenty of toys that they repeatedly throw at each other's heads play with. They have lots of books--a few of which I even manage to read to them occasionally. Several days a week, we go to the pool, or to visit friends, or they splash around in the sprinkler outside. This is what summer is about, right?

Well, it was.

Before stupid facebook.

Now, instead of being content that my kids can play, and swim, and splash their summer away, I am confronted by other people's pictures of what they're doing with their kids this summer. Of course, they're playing, and swimming, and splashing, too. But there's another common theme in most of these pictures:

Crafts.

Apparently, summer is no longer summer without getting in touch with your creative side.

I do that. I have a creative side.

You're looking at it.
 Right here. On this page.

Unfortunately, though, this isn't really something the kids and I can do together, as much as they might like to. Besides, I don't think it qualifies.

No, in order for summer to truly be summer, at some point, you apparently have to make something.

With your kids.

And dessert doesn't count.

With this new knowledge in hand, N and I went to Michael's yesterday. I have to say, I love Michael's. It inspires me. I walk in, and I want it all. I want to do it all. I want to scrapbook. I want to paint. I want to make Fall flower arrangements in July.

But mostly, I want to have a yard sale to sell the closet full of stuff from Michael's that I have accumulated over the years.

This time, though, I had a plan. I knew just what kind of crap  craft we were going to make. We were going to make hand prints. Easy, yet still crafty. And the best part is, it's cheap. Canvas and finger paints here we come!

Well, and maybe some model magic in case the whole hand print thing gets them in touch with their crafty side. And some new crayons. And a few picture frames. To keep all the other empty picture frames in my closet company. And just one wooden castle because, after all, it was on clearance.

OK, fine, I have a problem.

But at least we were all set to do hand prints. So today, I got all our supplies out, made sure the kids had on their grubbiest clothes--which they happened to already be wearing--and we headed outside.

We were going to do some fabulous crap  crafts.

N was ready. So ready, in fact, that she was done putting her hand prints on canvas by the time I got her brothers out the door. I put B's hands in the finger paint, and he proceeded to wipe them on his shirt. As I put O's hands in the paint, B decided to do his hand prints after all. All over the dog. O screamed that his hands were messy and he needed a towel. I told him the canvas was a towel and got one half-assed adorable hand print on it before he wiped the rest on my pants. N yelled that B put his hand prints on her canvas. I gave up on separate canvases and told them we would do one canvas with all of their hand prints. O sat on the ground as he looked at his paint covered hands in horror and cried for a towel. B told me he was done with hand prints, as somewhere in the background I heard N explaining the finer points of fingerprint analysis. Or maybe it was palm reading.

Who the hell knows.

I tried to figure out my next tactic, and when I turned around, B and O were gone. N looked at me and shrugged. I decided it must be time to make dinner, and went inside to find that most of our appliances were now covered in various colors of finger paint.

Who needs a canvas when you have a refrigerator?

After dinner, during which we set a new world record for how many times one child can be sent to his room in one sitting, J (who, by the way, had been mysteriously absent for stupid ass finger painting  craft time) offered to stay with the kids if I wanted to go out for a while.

Go out for a while?

Well, yes, I would like to go out for a while.

But really, where would I go? On a Sunday night. On short notice. In the limited time frame I know I have before J deliberately drowns himself in finger paint.

Maybe I could go to Michael's, and bring them back their stupid ass finger paint leftover paint. Or maybe I could go to Home Depot, and see if they have a paint color to match our new appliance colors--something in a shade of red-blue-yellow-and-even-friggin-green, perhaps?

I decide that neither of these is really appealing to me, and since the sky no longer looks like rain and the neighborhood pool is open for another hour or so, I signal for N to get her bathing suit on and put her clothes back on over it. I whisper for her to grab a towel and meet me out back.

Five minutes later, we are sneaking out of our own back yard. We stay low as we walk down the street. We move quickly to lessen the chances of being caught.

We must not be caught.

We talk quietly and look straight ahead. We can't take the chance of stopping to talk to a neighbor.

They might see us.

Finally, we are out of sight of the house. We keep walking. N is laughing.

"Pretty sad when you have to sneak out of your own house, mom".

Yup, sure is.

We stay at the pool for an hour.

There are fifteen kids there.

And yet, it feels quiet.

No one is wiping finger paint on me.

I even get to swim in the big pool.

We walk home, proud of ourselves for accomplishing our mission. N is wearing her wet bathing suit under her clothes and tells me I need to start keeping an extra pair of underwear in my purse for future stealth missions.

I tell her I didn't have time to bring a purse, let alone underwear.

She asks me if the boys will notice that our hair is wet.

I tell her we'll say that we were washing the finger paint out of it.

She laughs and says, "This was really nice, mom."

I make a mental note to run away from home with my daughter more often.

And my sons, too.

Eventually.

When we get home, B falls asleep in my lap.

I lay him in bed, and say prayers with O, who adds his own prayer.

"Thank you God for mommy and daddy".

I have my own prayer, too.

Thank you God, for finger paint.

And swimming pools.

And small, lopsided hand prints.

And thank you God, for September.