Mother of the Year

I love my children. But sometimes I'm not sure where they came from. And other times I'm scared that I know exactly where they came from.

At Cody's day care open house last year one of the teacher's told me, "Cody has the most vivid imagination of any child I've ever met." Sounds like a compliment doesn't it? However, her face said, "You're child is either a habitual liar or needs to be locked up in the closest mental hospital." Where to begin to explain why she might feel this way. I'll start with the fact that Cody has 11 sisters. Not real sisters. They live in  his head. I guess it is his form of an imaginary friend. Except as he describes them they are all dead. So maybe he's like the kid in the 6th Sense. Freaked out yet? I don't know if there are really 11. That's just his go-to number when asked how many sisters he has. Some of the sisters are good and some are bad. The bad sisters eat poop. One of the sisters died by getting hit over the head with an axe.

Last week the boys' Aunt took them to an apple orchard/pumpkin patch. Cody refused to leave without the purchase of a bottle of honey. She eventually gave in. When I picked him up that day and she presented me with the bottle of honey she said how he insisted that she get it. On the way home I asked him about the honey. I had never known him to have ever had honey, but thought maybe he had eaten it at my mom's or mother-in-law's house. It seems his sisters had sent him to a store to get ingredients for pumpkin cake and he couldn't find honey. So when he saw it there, he had to get it. By the way, the ingredients for pumpkin cake are honey, sugar, salt, pepper and the guts from a pumpkin. He didn't give me how much of each you are supposed to use or what you're supposed to bake it at, but if you're interested in the recipe I'll ask him in the morning.

Keaton is one and for the most part he's been a really good child. Then he turned one and he developed a sense of purpose. That purpose appears to be doing only what he wants to do and the rest of the world be damned. He goes to an at-home day care. A wonderful woman who's been watching children forever. She's watched my nephews and an old co-worker's daughter as well as Cody before we moved him to a day care that also has a pre-school a couple of years ago. When I picked Keaton up last week, the sitter's son said, "This is the one. This is the one that's going to break her." Looks like I'm going to have to give her a raise and get him on the waiting list at Cody's day care.

So one day when you read an article in the paper about a mother that's been tied up and locked in a closet and fed cat food by her children while their dad was out of town, it's likely her name is Molly. They probably won't print it as 4th Gear Molly.