Out of Sight

Some kids can be left to their own devices for long stretches of time. They entertain themselves, quietly, for hours. Often with nothing more than a couple of blocks or a pen and paper.

That is how our firstborn son is.

Some kids can't be out of your sight for more than a few minutes at a time. Oh, they can entertain themselves quietly, but that usually means they're into something they shouldn't be.

That is how our second son is. (Our daughter falls somewhere between the boys.)

The other day, I sent our three children upstairs, one at a time, to get their showers. I gave my standard threats.

"Five minutes and no more or I'll consider you to be playing and there will be trouble for you."

"Don't let me find a monsoon's worth of water on my bath mat because it takes four days to dry."

"If you drop the shampoo bottle on the floor, please pick it back up and make sure the lid is on so the next person will have shampoo and not slip in the shampoo that would otherwise leak onto the floor."

One of these days, my kids will be older and I won't have to repeat obvious directions to them. (But then they'll be teens, and I'll repeat other instructions to them: "Don't sip your Coke if you walk away from it at any time during a party." "Don't get in a car with someone who has had alcohol." "Just don't drink anything but bottled water that you buy yourself... and only hang around people who do the same.")

But, I digress. Allison was first into the shower. Then Clay. Two out of three down... one to go.

Spencer made it upstairs. But I didn't hear the shower running from downstairs. Five minutes passed. No water gushing. Ten minutes went by. Not even a trickle was heard.

Time for Meanie Mom to go upstairs to ruin whatever party he was having.

I got to the top of the stairs. Spencer must have heard me coming, because he looked at me so sweetly and said, "Oh, I'm sorry. I got some of daddy's white stuff on my face. I forgot to get into the shower."

One sniff of my boy confirmed that he'd been faux shaving with Bruce's shaving cream. Whatever. He gets distracted easily like his momma, so I re-routed him to the tub and shower time was finally underway.

I never thought another thing about it.

The next morning Bruce asked me who had been using his razor.

Huh? What?

Spencer has been warned not to mess with our razors. I incorrectly figured the previous night that Spencer had simply put the shaving cream on his face, but not actually used the razor.

However, upon further inspection, we found baby fine red hairs in Bruce's razor.

Great. What area of his body had that child shaved? Probably his arm or something, I thought.

Obviously he hadn't nicked himself, or I would have heard about it. Loudly. Because momma is always on duty when blood is involved. I'm the official bearer of Band Aids.

Still, it took another full day to realize where Spencer had shaved. And then it hit me while we were eating breakfast.



First, I told him never to use our razors. Or else. (Or else we'd shave his eyebrows, by golly!)

Next, I asked him why he shaved his eyebrows.

"I don't like eyebrows," he said. "I want them gone."

Now how is a mom to reply after that comment?

I told him, "Honey, God puts hair all over our bodies for one reason or another. We need to leave most of them alone."

We talked about eyelashes protecting your eyeballs from debris. We discussed nasal hairs that prevent germs from getting to the moist part of your nose and giving you strep and what-not.

(What? Like you've never flown by the seat of your pants trying desperately to come up with something that will make sense to a six-year-old?!)

I thought I was doing well. Convincing even.

But that little stinker had to ask me why God put eyebrows up there.

Some kids...