April 10, 2020
Covid-19 Quarantine, Day 30
It’s 8 o’clock pm and Nicole and I are downstairs watching “Good Luck Charlie”. Allie ditched us tonight in favor of finishing “Iron Man” with Chris. By Allie’s request, they are watching all of the Marvel movies in chronological order. I like the Marvel movies too, but Coco doesn’t. I’m content to keep her company watching shows she likes instead.
Coco is excited Allie isn’t watching with us tonight, because it means she can have Allie’s spot on the couch. Allison is Sheldon-like in her love for her spot. Though I miss Allison’s company, I’m excited too. Now I can have Coco’s spot on the couch by the armrest.
Allison comes down when we are halfway through our first episode. “Mom, Dad wants to know where the Firestick remote is.”
“Why does Dad assume I know where it is? The boys probably did something with…” I trail off because I remember where I put the remote. Occasionally I hide it from the boys to keep them from sneaking upstairs and watching TV on the sly.
“It’s in my closet. Silver flat, lowest shoe shelf.” Allie turns and heads back upstairs, not even a little bewildered about why the remote would be in one of my shoes. Stranger things have happened here.
Nicole and I watch three episodes, then I tell her I’m ready to go upstairs. “Can I stay up later?” she asks.
“You want to stay up later? All alone? In the basement? With the door closed?” Nicole always insists that all the lights be off and that the door is closed when we watch TV in the basement.
“Yes. Yes. Yes. Maybe leave the door open.”
I tell her she can stay up until ten, and leave the basement door open just a bit. I’m wasting time on Facebook a few minutes later when she comes up and pulls the door all the way shut. She really likes the door closed.
I head upstairs and into my room. Allie and Chris are sitting on the bed; Iron Man is almost over. Allie makes a half hearted motion to get up, but I tell her she can stay there for a bit longer.
I do thirty calf raises and then lie on the floor to do my nightly exercises. I tore a muscle in my calf back in December. It’s healed now, but I have this chronic numbness in my right leg. The physical therapy exercises seem to help, so I try to do them every night even when I don’t want to.
When I finish, I kick Allison out of the bed so I can get in. She settles on the floor in front of our bed with her blanket and her pillow. I browse Facebook some more; I work a couple of the mini crosswords. When Iron Man ends, Allison asks if we want to watch an episode of Big Bang Theory.
We started letting Allison watch Big Bang with us a few months ago. It has a lot more sexual references than I remember it having when I watched it without my 12 year old daughter. Still, we let her watch because we figure she might as well hear the references when we are around.
[I have not had ‘the talk’ with her yet. I hope that she feels comfortable asking me questions as they arise, and I also bought her a couple of books. She was absent on the day they watched the sex education video at school this year. She made the mistake of pointing that out to me.
“Oh no!” I said. “That’s so sad you missed it! Don’t worry, we can watch it here.”
“Umm, that’s okay, Mom.”
I arranged my face in what I hoped was a sympathetic expression. “No really. It’s fine. We’ll put the video on the big screen in the basement. I’ll make popcorn. Do you want me to invite your dad or should we make it just us girls?”
Allison laughed, but nervously, like she couldn’t tell for sure whether or not I was joking.]
Anyway, Nicole comes into our room about halfway through the Big Bang episode. She glares at Allie. “Why does she get to stay up later?!” she asks. “I want to watch too!”
“It’s not appropriate for you, sorry,” I answer. “You can watch when you are 12.”
“It’s not fair!” she yells, but she still leaves the room and goes to bed.
Chris, Allie and I finish the episode in which Sheldon and Howard fight over a parking spot. It ends with Sheldon explaining “the naked revenge wiggle” to his dry cleaner.
Allison says good night and attempts to carry her blanket, pillow, water bottle, and various other paraphernalia out the door all at once. She manages it, but not faster than she could have if she’d just taken two trips.
Chris and I go to sleep thirty minutes later, and I don’t even wake up when the boys sneak in sometime during the night.
April 11th, 2020
Covid-19 Quarantine, Day 31
Chris gets up first this morning. He is going to Illinois to buy a tractor. Excuse me. A trencher. Apparently there is a difference.
I debate lying in bed a little longer; Coco has already taken the boys downstairs. I barely even heard them talking this morning. A pre-Easter miracle.
But then I remember the travel hand sanitizer I want Chris to take in his truck. I go in the hall and yell downstairs, “There is some hand sanitizer in the mudroom for you to take!”
“Where is it?” Chris yells back.
“In the mudroom! On top of my work stuff!” I bellow. We are at an impasse. I refuse to go downstairs to tell him quietly, and he refuses to come upstairs where he can hear me.
Allison opens her door and looks at me blearily. “Mom! What in the world are you doing?!”
She’s unhappy that I’ve been bellowing outside of her door. “Sorry,” I whisper. I shove her gently back into her room and shut her door. Waking tweens is a dangerous game, and not one I wish to play any longer.
I hop back into bed knowing I won’t be able to go back to sleep, but also knowing that’s no excuse not to at least make an effort. Ryan and Joel come bounding up the stairs seconds after I close my eyes.
“Mommy! A big bug! You have to come with us!”
Bugs are not allowed to live in my house, at least with my knowledge. I won’t seek them out outside and kill them, but I will definitely seek them out in my home and kill them.
“Is it a centipede?” I ask, now thoroughly alert.
“No!” shouts Joel, “It’s one with a whole bunch of legs! You have to come see! We have to kill him!”
“Get the vacuum!,” adds Ryan.
This is not their first rodeo. Joel takes my hand and leads me down the stairs. I grab the Dyson stick vacuum off of it’s charger and the three of us race down to the basement. I see the centipede on the trim. I turn the vacuum on before I push it against him, in case he decides to make a run for it. He does, but I plop the vacuum down on top of him. I’m pretty sure I see him die before the vacuum sucks him up the rest of the way. (I’m relieved, because I recently vacuumed up a huge centipede and he fell back out of the vacuum later. He was covered in gray dust and moving slower than usual, but he was clearly still alive. It was the stuff of horror movies.)
I keep vacuuming the basement tile for a while, because I believe that if I continue to run the vacuum the centipede will be less likely to make a zombie-bug appearance later. The boys cheer. I’m a hero.
Ryan and Joel grab the My Little Pony castle and their bin of cars from the basement, and we all head back upstairs. I see Nicole, and am reminded that I didn’t brush her hair yesterday. Or the day before. It is such a struggle to get her hair brushed, that I actually made an arrangement with her that I will only check her hair on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays during the quarantine. It is an arrangement she is swift to remind me of when I tell her to go brush her hair now.
“No! You said you are only going to check my hair on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays!” she yells. “It’s Saturday!”
“But I didn’t get a chance to brush it yesterday, so we need to do it today.” I’m so tired of having this argument with her. I’ve offered to shave her head numerous times, but so far she refuses.
An absolute battle commences. She is screaming. I’m frustrated. She’s frustrated. I finally whip out my phone, “That’s it. I’m going to email the Easter Bunny.”
“What?! You can’t do that!” Nicole says defiantly, but I can hear the hint of question in her voice.
“Watch me.”
I glare and then proceed to open my phone. I compose an email out loud:
“To: ebunny@gmail.com. Dear Easter Bunny, Hi. How are you doing? We are doing well, except that Nicole is having a really hard time doing what her mother tells her…”
“Wait!” Nicole says. I watch her internal struggle play out on her face as she contemplates her next move. She scowls. Glares at me. Scowls again. “Fine. I’ll brush my hair.”
[I actually wasn’t sure whether this charade would work on Nicole. The other day, she told me that her friend Ava said that there was no Easter Bunny or Santa. Ava said that the parents did it all.
Nicole is nine, and I went through a similar situation with Allison a few years ago. I should have been prepared, but I wasn’t. Allison was persistent in her quest for the truth. She asked me over and over again if there was actually a tooth fairy; often she asked right in front of Nicole. I finally decided to tell her the truth. I pulled her in to my room.
“You know how you have been asking about the tooth fairy lately? Well…I’m the tooth fairy.”
Allison smiled. She giggled. Then she pursed her lips. “Wait. What about Santa?”
“Umm. Also me.”
“The Easter Bunny?”
“Me.”
It happened so fast. All of a sudden Allie knew the truth about every holiday, and later I wondered if I’d done it wrong. My parents had never come right out and said that they were Santa or the Easter Bunny. We just eventually knew. They knew we knew, and we all pretended that we didn’t know they knew we knew. Ha! That’s actually how they handled giving us “the talk" too. Genius.
In any case, I had considered handling Nicole’s revelation a little differently. I ended up saying, “Well that’s sad Ava doesn’t believe in the Easter Bunny or Santa anymore! I know a family where as soon as someone says they don’t believe they stop getting presents.”]
Anyway, Nicole is either not willing to risk me emailing the Easter Bunny or she is not willing to admit that she no longer believes, because she heads upstairs to brush her hair.
When she gets back down, all four kids have their horns on. Joel takes Ryan’s red car out of his hand. Ryan smacks Joel on the back, hard, then sits pouting silently in his too small spider-man jammies.
Joel sits happily looking out the window at a squirrel who “jumps and wags his little tail” until Nicole comes and sits on him (she sits on Joel, not the squirrel). Joel screams and punches Coco. Allison takes Joel’s blankie and runs away.
I accuse all of my offspring of just wandering around looking for people to annoy, and I threaten to cancel Easter. I wonder when Chris will be home.
When Chris does finally walk in the door, I say in one long breath, “How did it go? Did you get the trencher? Did you use the hand sanitizer? I’m going for a walk. Good luck.”
Fifty minutes later, I’m feeling much better and suspect that all of my children will survive this day after all. When I walk back into our culdesac, I see Chris, Nicole and the boys all outside. Ryan and Joel run toward me ecstatically. “You want to play the monkey game now? Do you want to?!”
They mean monkey in the middle, but I tell them we’ll let Daddy and Coco finish their game of horse first. They just started, so I join. Nicole tells me I have to go after Chris. He keeps shooting from farther back than I can, and utilizes one particularly difficult shot from behind the trencher. I don’t make a single basket and earn the letters H-O-R. Thankfully, Nicole gets Chris out by calling ‘granny shot’ every time she shoots. When it’s just Nicole and me, I start making baskets.
“I’m going to win and you are going to lose!” Nicole taunts. “It’s time to get out the big guns. Oh. The big guns aren’t working.” She is still working on the trash talk.
When she has H-O-R-S, and is about to shoot to keep from getting her E, she turns to me.
“Hey, how about we make a bet? If I make this, I don’t have to eat a banana or an egg before nachos. If you win, I still have to eat something healthy first.” (Since the quarantine I’ve been letting the girls eat nachos for lunch as long as they have something healthy first. Our dietary standards are really slipping.) Nicole misses the basket.
Allison joins us outside, and the whole family plays monkey in the middle. When Joel is the monkey, he jumps around making monkey noises and shouting, “Give me back my banana!”
When Chris is the monkey, he comes running full speed at whoever has the ball, arms flailing around. Joel and I dissolve into fits of laughter whenever he comes at us. We bend over holding the ball, laughing so hard that our laughter turns silent. We gasp for breath. I try not to pee my pants (I am successful).
Allison and Ryan want to play family soccer instead of monkey in the middle. We have a vote. There are two votes for, one vote against, and three abstentions. Soccer it is. I assign Allison and Nicole as captains and they begin selecting their teams.
Nicole chooses Ryan first. I bounce around shouting, “Pick me! Pick me!”
Allison picks me, but I can tell it’s out of pity because instead of saying, “I choose Mom,” she says, “Ok, fine. Mom I guess.”
It doesn’t end up mattering, because Joel insists on being on Chris’ team. We decide that it will be Chris, Joel and me against Allison, Nicole and Ryan. Joel takes both our hands as we walk to our side. “Hey, we gots a lot of big guys on our team!”
Even with both ‘big guys’ on the same team we are fairly evenly matched. I ruthlessly take the ball from Ryan and aim for the goal. It would have been a decent kick, but Nicole is in the way. The ball hits her right in the stomach, and she doubles over. She is laughing but also in pain. While I’m checking if she’s okay and apologizing, Ryan makes an attempt at a goal. Chris blocks it, but when he looks up he sees Joel half way to the garage. “Where are you going, Joel?” he yells.
“I’m thirsty,” he answers simply. Family soccer is over. “Take five!” we tell each other, “Not minutes. Hours. See you at 6 pm.”
I make myself lunch when I get inside. I put a bowl of leftover soup in the microwave, butter a piece of bread and add a couple slices of turkey and some cheese. I arrange my half sandwich and soup neatly on my plate, and sit down to eat.
Joel walks by and stares at my lunch. “Hey!” he says excitedly, “I want some soup!”
“It’s all gone, sorry,” I tell him.
Joel stares at my soup again. “No it’s not! Look! There’s some right there on your plate!”
“That’s my soup,” I say hopefully.
“It’s okay, you can share!” answers Joel. He smiles and nods his head in encouragement.
I resignedly scoop half of my soup into a plastic bowl and hand it to Joel.
The boys don’t notice that it’s playstation time until closer to 2 o’clock, so I tell the girls we’ll dye eggs at 4. I go upstairs to my room and lie down. I fall asleep and dream that I’m sleeping on my stomach. When I wake up, I’m sleeping on my stomach. I used to have exciting dreams.
Allison comes in at 4:30 pm, and I agree that we should start dying eggs. She pulls out the mugs and the food coloring and boils water in the electric kettle. Nicole scoops teaspoons of vinegar into each mug, and Allie pours in the boiling water. All four kids add food coloring and begin happily dipping eggs. This year, none of the eggs crack. Nobody spills. Everybody listens.
When all the eggs are dyed, the kids head outside and strap their horns on again. Allie and Nicole fight over the rules of their made up game. I can hear them screaming from the kitchen. I hear Joel or Ryan crying. Chris comes in long enough to complain that “these kids are driving me nuts.”
I get a video call from one of my best friends from college. I haven’t seen him in years, but since covid-19 has us all confined to our houses we’ve video chatted twice. We add another good friend to the call, and I’m overjoyed to see them both.
Nicole comes in to tattle on Allie. Ryan comes in to ask if he can watch a show, and I tell him no. He uses the step stool to reach the remote and turns on Ninjago. I allow it because I don’t feel like stopping him. Allie storms in, clearly mad at Nicole. Joel comes in crying and sits on my lap, then joins Ryan on the couch. I pretend I don’t see them watching TV.
My friends refer to my house as a circus more than once. I’m enjoying talking to them so much that I abandon my original plans for dinner and make chicken nuggets and tater tots instead. Yes…for the second night in less than a week.
I make plates for Ryan and Joel, and Allie, Nicole, and Chris help themselves. By the time I sign off my video chat and get a plate, it’s slim pickings. We all point fingers at who ate more than their share of tater tots, but really, one package of tater tots and 25 chicken nuggets is just not enough to feed my family of six anymore.
The food is gone, and Joel and Ryan are still hungry. I cut up apples and cucumbers and divide them between the kids. Nicole makes the mistake of leaving the table to use the restroom. Joel and Ryan steal all of her apples and most of her cucumbers. She takes it pretty well.
In fact, after eating, Nicole feels well enough to put her horns away and replace them with her halo. She cleans the basement, then the main level. I ask the girls to put the boys to bed, just to see how it will go.
It does not go well. There is a lot of screaming upstairs. I go up to investigate and tell Allison I no longer need her help. I brush the boys’ teeth, and Nicole reads them their stories while I gather three days worth of laundry from their room and put it in our hamper.
I can’t help but notice the three or four days worth of laundry that Chris has left next to his hamper. “Will you please clean up your clothes in the closet—it’s stressing me out,” I say to Chris.
Chris is lying in bed reading a comic. He fake sighs. “Ugh. Clean floors make me stressed!” I know he is lying, but I can’t prove it. I roll my eyes and read in the hall until the boys fall asleep.
It’s 8 o’clock when I go back downstairs. I promised the girls one episode of Good Luck Charlie, but while we watch I run though the items still on my to-do list: dishes, counters, vacuuming, shower, Easter Bunny duties. It’s not all going to happen, so I mentally cross out shower. I won’t see anyone but immediate family in person, and it’s called FaceTime, not SmellTime. Maybe I’ll have time for a shower tomorrow.
The girls head up to bed. I remind Nicole that the Easter Bunny can’t come until everyone is asleep, and I remind Allison to stay in her room. I finish my nightly cleaning routine and go upstairs. Allison’s light is still on, but Nicole appears to be asleep.
I go into my room to retrieve the candy I’ve stashed there and notice that Chris is asleep. “Hey, Chris!” I say, not at all quietly. “You have to help me! Do not ruin Easter.”
“Just give me a minute,” he replies sleepily.
I stand right next to the bed and stare at him until it gets awkward. He opens one eye. “Yeeesss?” he says.
“Get. Up.”
Satisfied that Chris won’t fall back asleep, I take two Costco sized bags of candy and a jigsaw puzzle and lug them down to the kitchen table. I’m using a large kitchen knife to open the boxes I’ve been hiding the last couple of days when I hear footsteps in the dining room.
Knife in hand, I look at Allie menacingly. “What did you see?!” I demand.
Allison is covering her face, but I suspect she can still see me and my knife. “Nothing! I just wanted to see if you’d turn the music down!” she says quickly, “This is not your quietest night.”
“Back to bed!” I say, blocking the entry to the kitchen with my body (and my knife). She scurries back up the stairs. I turn the music down.
I take the now empty boxes out to the recycling bin and wash my hands. I use a clorox wipe to clean the door knobs, light switches and faucets, because you can’t be too careful these days.
I make a drink. Santa might like milk and cookies, but the Easter Bunny likes rum. I fill the kids’ baskets with goodies. Chris and I stuff all one hundred and thirty eggs and hide them on the main level and in the basement. I take the drawings the youngest three kids drew for the Easter Bunny and leave a note in their place. I want to add, “P.S. I’m watching you!” to the end, but I refrain.
April 12, 2020
Covid-19 Quarantine, Day 32
I don’t end up falling asleep until after 2 am. It makes for a short night since the girls come into our room at 7:20. They wake the boys (a strange turn of events) and tell them it’s Easter. Joel jumps up and yells something unintelligible. Ryan stands up, but still looks pretty tired.
“Did you guys want to sleep in more?” Allison asks us politely.
I look around at the four children standing around my bed. “It seems a bit late for that offer, does it not?”
“Well, we can take the boys to my room if you want?” Allie is on her best behavior.
“It’s Easter,” I say, “We’ll get up. Boys, put your underwear on and get dressed.”
I grab for the laundry bag sitting next to my bed. The load was actually washed and dried two days ago, and I ran the dryer cycle three times to avoid having to take it out. “Oh. This should probably be fluffed before I fold it,” I thought to myself each time I remembered it was in there. Unfortunately, the boys ran out of underwear completely yesterday, so I was forced to finally put the clean clothes in the bag and bring it upstairs.
I dig through the bag and hand each boy a pair of boxer briefs. Ryan attempts to put his underwear on over his pull-up not once but twice before one of his sisters takes pity on him and helps.
I head into the bathroom and brush my teeth and wash my face. I can hear the girls struggling to keep the boys upstairs, so I skip brushing my hair and just re-gather it into a pony tail. Chris comes in and gets ready too, and then we join the kids at the top of the stairs.
The boys are excitedly pointing at the eggs they can see and keep shifting from side to side, so they can see around me while we go over the ground rules.
“Boys, you get to see your presents from the Easter Bunny first, and then we’ll hunt eggs after, okay?” Nicole says kindly.
“Boys. Do. Not. Touch. Any. Eggs,” Allison warns sternly. I guess she is the bad cop in this scenario.
The kids wait for me to go downstairs first, so I can turn on the lights and get a video of them all coming down the steps together. I make them pose for a picture or two and then set them free. They all come barreling down the steps yelling, “Chaaarrrrge!”
Joel runs by me last, still chanting, “Charge! Charge!”
I keep my camera pointed on the steps and the video rolling, so I don’t miss Chris running down the steps alone a few seconds later also yelling, “Charge!”
The kids check out their baskets. Allison gets her favorite book trilogy, Renegades. Nicole gets a Pusheen coloring book, some new markers, and a journal. The boys have a spot it-numbers and shapes game propped up between their two tiny baskets. (Their mother bought Allison and Nicole nice large baskets from Pottery Barn Kids with their names embroidered neatly on the basket liners. She’s been meaning to buy nice baskets for Ryan and Joel, but she never got around to it. Allison pointed out the discrepancy the night before, but the boys don’t seem to notice nor care.)
There are three new jigsaw puzzles and a basketball for everyone to share, and all the kids have candy in their baskets. After reading the note from the Easter Bunny and exclaiming over their gifts, Allison and Nicole dump their baskets’ contents unceremoniously on the floor in preparation for egg hunting. The boys follow suit, though Joel has already opened a small package of gummy bears and shoved them all in his mouth at once.
I make the kids stand still for just a couple more photos, then say, “On your marks! Get set! Go!!!”
All four of them tear about like maniacs, collecting eggs with a feverish intensity I rarely see applied to any other task. “This is so fun!! I’m founding some!!” Joel yells as he careens through the hall.
Nicole and Ryan both see an egg in the vase on the kitchen counter. She sweetly hands it to her brother. “Here you go Ryan, I think you saw it first!”
When Joel asks me to help him find more eggs, I catch Allie stealthily following us, no doubt hoping for hints on eggs they’ve missed.
The kids finish their first run through of the main level and basement, then decide to count eggs. We open 107 eggs, which means there are still 23 out there.
The search continues. I help too. Now that I’m 38 years old, I can hide the eggs the night before and still be pleasantly surprised when I find them the next morning. Allison finds two $5 dollar bills and three $1 bills. She scoffs when Chris tells her she has to split whatever money she finds with Nicole. She adamantly insists she shouldn’t have to share, but when Nicole finds a $10 bill in an egg her diatribe fades.
When nobody can find any more eggs, including Chris and myself, we count again. One hundred and twenty nine. One is still missing, but the kids decide they are willing to let that go while they assess their loot.
Joel is popping open eggs as fast as he can. He gasps in delight every time. “I got another….this!!” he yells happily, holding up a snickers bar.
I open the box for the dinosaur puzzle and dump all 100 pieces onto the floor. Nicole, Allison, Ryan and I begin piecing it together. Chris helps from the couch. “That piece goes there…by your foot. Nope. Not that one.”
Wrappers pile up around Joel. He’s eaten at least five or six fun size packages of gummy bears when he asks me to open his ring pop. He steps daintily around the puzzle pieces. “Caw, caw!” he mutters absentmindedly in what we assume is his best pterodactyl impression.
We finish the dinosaur puzzle and begin the pirate one. Ryan gathers the pieces with the purple octopus tentacles and joyfully snaps them in place. “The tent-it-tulls! I’m doing all the tent-it-tulls!”
Joel eats 6 more pieces of candy. He prances by the emerging pirate ship and shouts, “Yo-ho, let’s go!”
The puzzle is finished except for once piece. Nicole, Ryan and I all stand up and look around. Allison remains sitting. Nicole asks her to move. She asks nicely the first time, not so nicely the next four. Finally Allison raises one side of her bum off of the floor, high enough to grab the missing piece. She triumphantly pops it in place.
Chris makes coffee, and we both eat breakfast. I offer various breakfast foods to the kids, but they decline all of them. “We are having CANDY for breakfast!” they declare. (It’s fine with me, because that’s how Claussens do holidays. We let them eat as much candy as they want the day of the holiday, but around 6 or 7 at night all of the candy gets dumped into the candy drawer. Until it’s gone, they can each have three pieces a day for gouter.)
Allison sorts her candy by type and arranges it in a semi circle around herself. She announces she is having a candy swap, and convinces her three siblings to join her. Once everyone’s ‘shop’ is set up, they travel from store to store, taking turns trading candy they like for candy they like even better.
The game evolves as Allison and Nicole create price lists on post-its. Nicole keeps her prices low. One package of fun size skittles can be bought with one York Mint and so on. Allison is the Dierbergs of the candy shop world. Her products are neatly arranged, and her prices are sky high. She charges three packages of Sweet-Tarts for a single Reece cup.
Both girls gather some candy from all four shops into a basket and hand it to me, so I can be the customer. I approach Allison’s store first. I pay the outrageous fee for a Reece cup and don’t even mind, because I don’t care for Sweet-Tarts. Allison regrets her decision immediately and later buys the Reece cup back from me for two Milky Ways, a Snickers bar and a package of Peanut M&Ms.
At Nicole’s store I give her a package of skittles to buy a Milky Way. She hands me the Milky Way and then says, “Here, you can have one more for free!” I tell her thank you but refuse. She is generous to a fault.
When I get to Ryan’s store he’s holding out a half eaten package of Sweet Tarts. “Here, this is for you to buy!” he tells me, clearly pleased with himself.
“No thank you,” I say, “How much is it for one package of skittles?”
“Ummm…let me think,” says Ryan tapping one finger on his bottom lip. “One skittles is one skittles.”
We make the trade and both have exactly what we started with. Ryan puts his hands on his hips and rocks back on his heels. “Thank you! Ok! Get out of my shop now!” he shouts cheerfully.
I move on to Joel’s shop. He is sitting in the middle of his candy, merrily consuming his merchandise. When I stop in front of him he pushes a few wrappers behind him with his foot. “You want to buy something, Mommy?” he asks. “You want to buy this ring? It is magical!”
Joel holds out the plastic ring his ring pop used to be on. It’s licked completely clean except for a small spot on the top of the ring which still looks sticky. I gently push his hand out of my face and say, “No, thank you.”
“How much for the Starbursts?” I ask.
“One Starbursts is…..one Starbursts,” he answers. I’m not sure the boys are understanding this game.
I hand the basket of candy to Chris, so he can take over the shopping, then I sneak upstairs to fold the load of laundry I’ve been neglecting for three days. When I get back downstairs, the candy store game has ended in much the same way most games at our house end: in tears with a side of yelling.
We decide that now would be a good time to watch Onward in the basement. Allison pops three bags of popcorn, pours them in bowls and salts them. I grab one of the bowls and a coke and head down. The screen is already pulled down and the movie is cued. Nicole sits in her spot by the armrest then comes Ryan, me, and Joel. Allison is in her spot on the end of the sectional. When Chris arrives, the only spot left is the one over the crack between the two cushions. He squeezes himself in between Joel and Allie.
The movie is cuter than I thought it would be. We all enjoy it. As usual, I cry at the touching moments, and my cold-hearted family makes fun of me. During the last big action scene, Ryan points at Ian and yells, “Yeah!! I like him! I want to be him!!”
After the movie the girls go upstairs, probably to eat more candy. I start charging one of the playstation remotes and ask Chris to turn on the super hero game for the boys when it’s charged. Then I head to my room to try to squeeze in a nap to make up for my short night.
I lie down but I’m interrupted first by Allison who wants to take a shower, then by Nicole who claims she found the last egg (she didn’t). Ryan comes in next, crying that Dad didn’t set up the superhero game. I ask Allie to do it, and am just drifting off to sleep when Chris comes in to use the computer.
I finally fall asleep for an hour or so, but it’s one of those naps where I feel worse when I wake up than I did before. Or course, that also might be the result of eating two Milky Ways and a 100 Grand for lunch.
I finally get the shower I’ve been threatening to take since yesterday, then Chris and I tell the kids it’s time for egg-bashing. (We’ve been doing the annual Easter egg bashing tournament for years. It’s an increasingly well known fact that when two eggs are bashed together end to end, only one egg will crack. The last person to have an un-cracked end of their egg wins.)
We video call my parents, my sister’s family, and Chris’ parents, and after some technical difficulties we are ready to begin. We don’t usually do the tournament virtually, but since everyone is on their own at Easter this year we are trying it.
Nicole draws cards for everyone to decide initial placement, and I use an app on my phone to create the double elimination tournament. The battle begins. Sisters are pitted against brothers, mothers against sons, and husbands get taken out by wives. It is a ruthless process. Many eggs are sacrificed. In the end, I am victorious. Sometimes there is a monetary prize for the egg champion, but this year I only win bragging rights.
It’s already after 6 by the time the tournament is over. I finally convince the boys to eat something other than candy. Joel has a banana and Ryan has a whole breakfast sandwich. I spend a small amount of time trying to get them to agree to split both items, but upon remembering all the junk they ate today I decide it probably doesn’t really matter and give in to their demands.
I peek my head in the garage and ask Chris if he’s ready to do showers for the boys. He says it will be a minute, so I do the dishes and wipe off counters. I find piles of sugar from Sour Patch Kids on the table, and I feel nerds sticking to the bottoms of my socks.
The boys take their showers, and I get them ready for bed. Tonight Ryan chooses the book “Bubble Trouble.” It’s about a baby who gets wafted away inside a bubble, and its alliterations and rhyming scheme make it fun to read. I read it slowly and let the boys point out all their favorite parts of the pictures. After I finish, I ask Joel what story he wants, and he picks “Bubble Trouble” also. I try to talk him out of it, but again, end up giving in to his demands. But the second time I read it, I read twice as fast; that’ll show him.
The boys are exhausted from all the excitement and fall asleep within minutes. I finish my chapter in the hall anyway before heading down to finish cleaning.
Nicole has already cleaned the entire main level when I get down. She’s gathered and recounted the eggs (we had all 130 after all), put away the puzzles, and she even vacuumed for me. I still see quite a few nerds rolling around on the floors, but I’m so grateful for her efforts that I leave them.
Nicole and I watch two episodes of “Good Luck, Charlie” while Allison and Chris watch the first half of “Iron Man: 2.” We are all in bed by 10 o’clock, exhausted but happy.
