Arms Full Of Marbles

Today's post has nothing at all to do with this picture. I took it. I think it's pretty. And I don't have any good pictures of the boys to post.


Today I took the boys to the pool. We joined the pool at the Holiday Inn so that we could have a place to go to splash around and to practice swimming. It's not swanky, but it's a pool, and usually the only other people there are elderly or vastly overweight ladies, and sometimes a few other young kids.

But today a woman walked in with three bigger kids. And when I say big, I mean the biggest one probably displaced more water than I did. This wouldn't have been a big deal, except that he chose to displace it again and again and again by jumping into the pool, and the around while in the pool.

We've had issues before with kids playing wildly in the pool. There are many signs that say NO DIVING, NO JUMPING, but kids don't read signs. And many parents don't enforce the rule. Even when they do, kids are kids. They don't come there to swim laps, they splash, they kick, they move around, and the once smooth surface of the water becomes a stormy sea with waves overlapping the edges of the pool and splashing right into Andy's face as he hovers, helpless, in his water-wings.

And I understand. I UNDERSTAND.

But these boys... they were bigger. And they were throwing balls - tiny, juggling balls. And they had bad aim, I have to tell you, most of the time the balls ended up out of the pool and one of them had to splash past us to get out of the pool and retrieve it, the splash back in and hurl it to the other end of the water.

The older ladies I spoke about earlier, the ones that do not move around well in water or on land, exited the water and retreated to the hot tub, but not before one of them yelled at the largest boy "No Jumping!" after he practically landed on top of her.

This was the only time I saw the mother react. She then yelled at her son, and it was embarrassing for him, no doubt. But she never seemed to notice how they bumped into other swimmers or how many times I rescued Andy from one of their lurching bodies. She sat there and read a paperback, and at one point actually left to try out the workout room. (There is a glass wall between the rooms.)

And I rolled my eyes, and I thought about how horrible her children were, and how she was making no effort with them. No Effort.

And then Andy decided he would swim without water wings. Nick and Nate were having a go at it, so I guess he wanted to be included. And I was kind of fighting him on it, when I heard Nick start crying and spluttering, and it turned out he had been sans flotation device over his head and needed me and the the boys had been splashing and I hadn't noticed! (Later it came out that one of the boys had actually landed on top of him, but whatever.) Hooray, Mom!

This was followed quickly by Andy jumping into the shallow end of the pool sans water wings and hitting the back of his head on the concrete edge on the way down. Loud crying. Hooray, Mom!

Not to mention the fact that this morning I threw a fit after Nathan pushed Andy in the driveway (Andy has a banged up face) and Nathan also threw a fit, which the school bus driver and our neighbor leaving for work all got to see. And that Nathan himself also has a black eye due to a block being chucked at his face by a brother.

And I thought about all of this as we got dressed to leave the pool, and when we walked back out past the woman reading and her three, very active boys who were drinking gatorades in the hot tub, I realized that there was no way to keep it from happening.

I do my very best, and my kids get banged up and hurt and they hurt each other. They throw fits and they cry and they refuse to go outside because of bees and they insist they can swim when they can't. They fight over junk mail and refuse to pick up toys and then cry when I enforce our rules. And they do it all at the same time, one ofter another, never giving me time to solve one problem before another disaster strikes. It's like trying to carry marbles across the room in your arms, and they keep falling, but if you stop to pick them up, more will fall because you can't really move your arms. And all these people are sitting around watching you do this and thinking "What is her problem? Why does she keep dropping all those stupid marbles?"