I am sitting at Mac's flag football practice looking at all the pretty, pretty hair. Longer and more coiffed than mine. It's a coed team, but it would be the boys who are rocking the flowing locks. Down to the side braid action. It was unexpected.

Baba is unfamiliar with any doo-wap music because, as she explained to her father, she doesn't listen to '80s music. And totally not '70s either.

It isn't a good thing, when visiting family, to hear your nephew say "Hey X-Man, wait......where are your pants." It good thing that a toddler can't move too fast with arms full of toys and pants around the ankles.

Cinco's still mad that I wouldn't let her wander around the house with a steak knife. Also, I still labor under the assumption that coffee should not be served in a communal family cup. Which is a personal affront to 

Cinco. Furthermore, I won't let her drink the bubbles. 

And now there's crying in football.....I'm so confused. Looks like Mac's practicing his touchdown dance. All in all, for the family introduction to football......it's going to be interesting. 

I will keep things short and sweet as copious amounts of family are still in town. Not to mention, the children all tend to disappear and while I'm sure they're all up to no good, it's no good of which I am unaware, so......I have little to discuss.

This is not to say I haven't learned things over the last few days.

My house holds twelve children remarkably well. I'm a little concerned. I had sold the father figure on the supposed fact that our home is too small for anymore children This argument might have blown out of the water. However, the father figure has taken up more X-Man wrestling in the recent past and that whole gleam in his eye has significantly dimmed.

Salted coffee is not good. In any way. What I haven't learned is how salted coffee came to be. Yes, the reason why my salt supply was decimated was partly due to X-Man climbing on the counter and dumping it all over the stove top. However, I still can't wrap my head around him dumping it in the sugar container. That takes a level of wiliness that I am still not certain that he possesses. Although he does continually surprise me. No other child will cop to it, so the mystery remains.

Muting your phone DOES NOT silence games. At least not if X-Man turns on Angry Birds: Star Wars, during his aunt's wedding. It's a good thing the game blasts the theme at the beginning, otherwise not everyone would have known what he was doing.

If there is a family barbecue to celebrate your brother in law's birthday, X-Man will strip down completely......because.

Cinco is completely my child. Part of her morning routine involves bringing me shoes to put on her. Part of her life routine involves removing her shoes constantly. And growing. So I discovered that she had lost the shoes (yes I'm blaming the baby here) that fit her and the shoes that her sister had put on her were very small. I found myself in Target with all the children, shopping for shoes for Cinco. She started to hyperventilate when we reached the shoe aisle. She laid down in the seat of the cart, with her legs high up in the air, waving her feet. In case I didn't know where to put her shoes, which, considering the missing pair, is a valid point. She was VERY happy. I had to remove the tag to give to the clerk as she would not remove the shoes themselves.

Tomorrow I am taking to children to a park where there is water nearby. I give it five minutes before they have all fallen in. Their knack for divining water and then throwing themselves bodily into it isn't useful in any way. They got it from me.

Today is one of those days. The kind of day where you throw your hands up in the air and say "That's it. Call the short bus I'm throwing you all on." Baby forgot place value. And how to tell time. And how to count. And that's after a week of no summer school. She did not forget to tell me that it is my fault because I got a book that was too hard for her. Heaven forbid the third grade student do third grade work. Meanwhile, as I was trying to remind Baby that she did indeed know state she lived in, Mac completed half his workbook. And X-Man contemplated biting me. He thought a particular drawer in the kitchen should be opened. I did not. He screamed at me and opened it again. I said "Unless your head's on fire, don't scream at me like that" and shut the drawer. I kept my  hand on it and thus thwarted his plans. Enraged he lunged towards my hand, mouth wide open. He moves faster than he thinks, but he did manage to catch himself, as his teeth barely grazed my skin. Slowly he turned his large eyes towards mine. "You want to rethink that choice young man?" He took me up on that offer and backed out of the kitchen.  Oh yeah, and the father figure drank all my beer. The "girly, sissy, way too sweet" stuff that was supposedly waiting for me after a long day of soccer and school.

So that was my day.

So this is a bumbo chair. Little ones, who are not capable of sitting on their own quite yet, can sit upright in it and observe the chaos into which they have been born. Note to the readers, apparently the bumbo was recalled or something because some parents would place their highly unstable children in it, on a high surface and then leave said child unattended. The still top heavy child would topple and injuries would abound. That's not prudent. An advantage to having thousands of children is that you can't ever leave the baby unattended because you will return to her eyes gouged by her enthusiastically affectionate brother. Speaking of improper uses of the bumbo chair, X-Man is obsessed with it. Much as he is obsessed with Cinco's playmat with toys that hang overhead. I am chalking it up to part of his refusal to be potty trained. He is perfectly willing to share the baby spotlight with Gestated Cinco, but he will share it. There will be no surrendering of it. So, of course, he too must sit in the bumbo. Fortunately, at least at this point, he is still willing to wait until Cinco is out of it.

The first, of many problems, with X-Man's attempts to sit in the bumbo is that he is a first world toddler. His legs are about the size of my arms. There is a certain amount of give in the bumbo, to allow babies of varying sizes in. But part of the beauty of the chair is that it doesn't easily release the child. Which greatly annoys X-Man. And leads to the bumbo butt. And rage. Because, while he most certainly wants to be free, he's not interested in anyone removing it from him as that means they are taking it away from him. Most likely to give it to Cinco and We. Can't. Have. That. So he staggers around. Chair and all.

Which is why, at least one of the many reasons, I avoid all things parental on the internet. Most especially anything else written by a home school mom. I don't need to hear how your toddler is conjugating verbs in Latin while mine in pooping in the corner and then helpfully bringing said waste products to me. I'm well aware of the fact that someone has to bring up the bottom of the scale. I guess this is how I take one for the team.

I used to work in a coffee shop. Because that’s what graduates with liberal arts degrees do.  I actually met a guy who was a member of a Christian Rock band “HyperStatic Union” and he was excited that I got the play on “Hypostatic Union.” He said I was the first person to ever put them together, at least in their presence. I explained that I had a double major in philosophy and theology and would he like room in his coffee?

Ah coffee. No matter how often I say that Jim Bean is my mother’s helper, the truth is there is no helper for a mother like coffee. There is no liquid that is taken as seriously as coffee. I learned, as I became a coffee master, the details and depths that coffee knowledge can go. Coffee is a precious commodity. And it is to be savored, delighted in and valued.

With this in mind, I would like to thank coffee for all it does. It makes me almost coherent. I look almost human.  I manage to get dressed. And sometimes my shoes even match. I am prepared for nearly a third of the things that my children will spring on me. Coffee, you have been good to me.

I, though, have not been good to you. And I apologize. You deserve better than to be left for twenty four hours in the microwave. It’s a vicious cycle. I need you to function, but I fail to function enough to enjoy you.

I probably shouldn’t let you sit for two days in the pot. You want to help and improve my life, but it’s hard as you are ignored for days at a time. And then abandoned in the microwave.

I should have protected and respected you more and not let Mac paint the kitchen floor with you. Please don’t take it as a sign of disrespect. Just distraction.

I apologize for the cars and dinosaurs dipped in you. If I had my druthers, it would only be biscotti that graced your rims, but sometimes a child is hanging by one leg from a bunk bed and screaming. And by the time I get back to you, you have been swept off the table and into the Jurassic era.

I’m sorry for the toddler backwash that you are forced to endure. And the fact that sometimes I just drink you anyway. You deserve better than to be coughed in, while being discovered. Being poked by little fingers is actually a sign of how very interesting you are.

Someday, somehow, it will be just you and me again. And we will sit uninterrupted together. In peace and quiet. And we will pass judgment on all the other people in the nursing home.