Do Red Frogs Have Brains

Chips and salsa, and chocolate milk. That’s been the story around here lately. I don’t even think I particularly like those things. And yet . . . they just keep happening. It’s honestly getting a little ridiculous.

Also, I own . . . a muumuu (of sorts). It’s a giant, polyester square (with a hole for your head and holes for your arms) – brown, and patterned with dull leaves. It came from Wal-Mart. $9.88. I would add a picture, but, I just . . . can’t. Anyway, sometimes, in the mornings, I throw this baby on for a bit while I get kids up and going. It’s kind of like a bathrobe maybe . . . but with a lot more room . . . well . . . to move, I guess. (There is no questioning of the “one size fits all” claim on the tag. That’s certain.) But, for some reason, my younger children are absolutely bewitched by me in my muumuu. When they see me in it, they get starry eyed and want to reverently embrace me – which is why I wasn’t the least surprised when muumuu-clad me walked in to wake Anders the other morning, and, as he rubbed the sleep from his bleary eyes, his very first thought, the very first words he could even form, were (in an awed tone), “That looks like . . . a beautiful dress!”

Speaking of Anders, the other day he mentioned to me that there was something about Star Wars that he was just not really “bubliebing”. Yah. There are a lot of things in this world that are hard to bublieb. Like how much my kids adore my shapeless, polyester muumuu.

Later in the day, I realized I have not been writing down his awesome questions like I should have been, when he asked me why we have faces and if frogs have brains. Easy enough answered – faces so we have eyes to see, noses to smell and mouths to eat with (it didn’t sound quite so Little Red Riding Hood-ish when I told him); and yes, frogs do have brains. But then he said (unbubliebingly), “Do red ones??” (Good heavens no. Everyone knows red frogs are brainless idiots!)

As I did Goldie’s hair for school yesterday, she voiced to me her bed-time troubles of the night before. “Daisy kept trying to talk to me, but I didn’t really want to talk because it was so late; so then she said that if I was a teacher, my name would be Miss Grumpy. And I’d have to write that in chalk on the chalkboard: Miss Grumpy.” A pause. “And I know it sounds funny, but it WASN’T. It was mean.”

Speaking of Daisy: yesterday after school I walked into the living room (where she’d been balled up on the couch for a spell). “You should be proud of me,” she said, motioning to the church magazine nearby. “I just read the whole New Era.”

“I am proud of you,” I responded. “Now you’re probably 100 times better.”

“Yes,” she smiled. “100 times better than your other kids!”

“That is the goal,” I agreed. “It doesn’t matter so much that we better ourselves. Just that we be better than everyone else.”

Then I asked her if that magazine mentioned anything about doing your chores (as I eyed the dishwasher full of dishes she’d been asked, several times already, to empty).

She firmly insisted that it did not.

Summer, I can proudly report, has mastered the art of blowing raspberries. Loudly. (And she certainly suffers no lack of encouragement from her siblings.) I’ve also noticed that the minute my babies become mobile, all of their energies focus on one simple goal: getting themselves to a space small enough to wedge themselves in, and crying frantically for a rescue to get them back out; . . . so they can go back in. Under chairs, beneath computer desks, in small spots between walls and couches. It doesn’t matter where so much as it matters that it is a challenge to squeeze in – and impossible to get out. 

Lastly, it’s great that I don’t have to put any energy into decorating my home. All I have to do is just make sure a roll of painter’s tape is on hand; and then, I just sit there . . . and my house gets all . . . decorated.
(Listen, don’t go mentioning anything about the emphasis on Jeffrey’s status as a “boy cow” maybe conflicting with . . . his flying milk. It’s been mentioned. And the mentioner made no friend of the artist in the mentioning. If milk can fly, surely it can come from a male cow? Right?)

And . . . this. Perhaps you can’t tell by looking, but you are actually looking up – at the ceiling above Jesse’s bunk bed. See? Even clever spots I might not have ever gotten to. All perfectly decorated.

The End.