Hand Foot in My Mouth

According to WebMD, Hand Foot and Mouth Disease is viral infection “characterized by a rash of small blister-like sores on the palms of the hands, soles of the feet, and in the mouth.” According to WebParentalDictionary, Hand Foot and Mouth Disease is defined as “Oh. Crap,” which incidentally were the very words I uttered when I read the note from school explaining (very apologetically) there was an unnamed student with a possible case of Hand Foot and Mouth in class.

Oh. Crap.

Four-and-a-half hours of WebMd later, I managed to scale my nervous breakdown back a few notches and told the kids they could stop marinating in the bathtub filled with hand sanitizer. My neurotic medical research indicated Hand Foot and Mouth Disease only sounded like one of those terrifyingly named farm diseases and my children were not actually going to sprout beaks or hooves or start mooing. Or, at least not anymore than usual.

I was, however, left with the unnerving information that Hand Foot and Mouth Disease is passed through saliva and fecal matter — which, all right, I’ll just say it — we seem to have a lot of in our home. “Ms. Roach? Um, yeah, so your kids have taken up, well, licking one another during ‘ellipse time’? And maybe you could work with them at home on not licking one another’s faces?” is what their preschool teacher very tactfully told me last week.

Oh. Crap.

But the parental winds were apparently in my favor because despite their propensity for licking entire acres of surface area, not one of my children ever came down with Hand Foot and Mouth Disease. I, on the other hand, wasn’t quite so lucky.

A few weeks after the Hand Foot and Mouth note came home from school, I was out on an incredibly rare shopping trip with my four-year-old daughter. And I will tell you, this day with my daughter was magical — like, imagine if Walt Disney and Oprah were on a date… and then wrote a movie about it. We tried on hats and shoes and got a little giddy and teary over pink toile and sparkles. And I’m pretty sure we held hands and skipped while “Girl’s Just Want to Have Fun” played in the background.

We were sitting down to a grand lunch of chicken nuggets and French fries in the food court and I was relishing this undivided time with my daughter when she blinked her baby giraffe eyelashes and asked,

“Mommy how are chicken nuggets made?”

On the spectrum of random questions a parent will field, I figured this one was probably about a “2.” In my mind, I responded appropriately: chicken nuggets are made in a chicken nugget factory. But apparently I had contracted a severe case of Hand Foot In My Mouth Disease, so what I found myself saying out loud was,

“Well, first they take the chickens from the chicken farm and they kill them….”

And in my head I was gasping in horror, Stop! What are you saying?!! But because of this illness, I couldn’t stop and I so just kept on talking,

“…And then they rip all of the feathers out of the dead chickens….”

What is wrong with you?!! Are you insane?!! My head was now yelling at me.

“…And then they take the dead chickens to the chicken nugget factory and cut them all up…”

For the love of Pete! She is four-years-old! Think of the therapy bills! My head was now pleading with me, but I was in the throws of Hand Foot In My Mouth Disease and so I kept on,

“…And at the factory they mash the chicken up and add lots of salt and toxic fillers and animal by products, press it into little nuggets…”

Oh. Crap.

“…. And cook it in the oven….”

By this point the cautionary voice in my head was quiet having packed up her bags and hopped a flight to anywhere but this nuclear melt down of an answer.

“… And, well, that’s how chicken nuggets are made,” I sort of coughed out at the end.

My daughter sat motionless staring at me like a Bush Twin in a Michael Moore movie. And I was Michael Moore. Actually, she was looking at me like I was Michael Moore and I had just killed Santa and then shaved his beard.

I sort of sat in a dazed stupor as the illness abated and I absorbed the aftermath of Hand Foot in My Mouth Disease.

“Mommy? I don’t really want any more of my chicken nuggets,” my daughter quietly pushed the remnants over to me.

Later that evening, after I had debriefed my husband on my bout with Hand Foot in My Mouth Disease, he asked, “So basically, our four-year-old daughter is now a vegetarian?”

I nodded the answer.

And I knew what he was thinking:

Oh. Crap.

'Tis the Season for Fudge

Every holiday season, there are a few things that get to me — Holiday movies, Christmas cards, and fudge. This triad of seasonal onslaught have the ability to reduce me to a weepy, facial twitching, shaking addict in stretchy pants to the point of, well, let’s just say I become more Gaga than Lady.

Of course, as all good mothers do, I blame the children.

Well, I suppose I can’t really blame the children for the Christmas cards. Or the fudge. It’s not their fault I pour over “the chosen list” of Christmas card recipients as if I am Herr Schindler and only those who receive a Christmas card with my children’s smiling, photo-shopped faces will be spared from Nazi oppression. I suppose it’s not the children’s fault I am too cheap to just pay the additional money for more cards and stamps so I don’t spend the first two weeks of December pouring over “the list” with pans of fudge in my lap as I decide if Great Aunt Aurelia or the mailman will make “the cut” this year. And facebook. I can’t blame the children for the way I am now in touch with hundreds of friends or the way friend requests completely muck up my list causing me to break out in hives. Of course, it could be the twenty-eight pounds of fudge giving me hives. I blame facebook for making me fat.

The weeping over holiday movies really is the children’s fault though. Because before I became a mother, I could watch “The Grinch who Stole Christmas” and not sob over the sight of Little Cindy Who and her fantastic eye lashes, or blubber as the Grinches’ pea-sized heart grew three-sizes. I could watch Charlie Brown’s Christmas and not cry over Linus’ recitation of the Christmas story, my maternal bosom heaving. Prior to becoming a parent, I was a stoic fortress of emotion when it came to Angel’s getting their wings, or Tiny Tim blessing one and all. Now I bawl like a guest on a Barbara Walter’s special forced to chop onions when I watch Clark Griswold’s attempt to string Christmas lights. I’m pretty sure I’d have to be admitted if I tried to watch Miracle on 34^th street, which is why my husband has had to ban the Velveteen Rabbit and LL Bean catalogues from our home for the entire month of December.

I am positive the reason for my uber-active holiday emotions lie with the children, because it all began the first holiday season upon their arrival. My triplets were born right after Thanksgiving and, as is the case of most triplets, ten weeks early. Weighing in at two and three pounds, they were born “not quite cooked” and therefore took up residence in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit where they could grow in incubators and receive their breakfast through tubes down their throats. In theory the dimly lit NICU with its eerily hushed and sterile environment was supposed to mimic a womb-like atmosphere in which babies could finish gestating. But the smell of iodine and disinfectant soap, the strictly enforced visiting hours, the mechanical beeping and hushed whirl of machines, the needles and cords and IV’s inserted into their little uncooked heads and translucent skin betrayed the fact that my babies were not so much in a womb, but on set of some sort of Alien Sci-Fi movie. I have never been a fan of Sci-Fi movies. I was also a hormonal mess.

But really, the reason for my emotionalism was my heart had transformed into this water-balloon-organ in my chest with a perpetual pin-sized leak. And no one told me this is what happens to your heart when you became a parent — this soul puncture — and so I spent the month of December wearing sanitation gowns, hovering over isolates, pumping breast milk and crying with my heart leaking all over the place. And although I couldn’t voice it out loud to anyone, I was praying for a Christmas-blockbuster-biblical-sized-miracle. I wanted my babies home with me by Christmas, because I wasn’t sure how my heart would not just completely seep out otherwise.

But there was no industrial-sized Christmas miracle. By Christmas Eve my babies were still too fragile, too busy healing brain bleeds and too little to take bottles. And so on that cold and rainy Christmas Eve, I was alone with my aching water-balloon-tear in my heart as I drove home from the NICU, and my husband was away on a work trip with his own heart leaking all over a Philadelphia hotel room, when I was in a car accident.

The accident was minor—there were no ambulances or emergency vehicles. It was the kind of accident where insurance information is exchanged and Christmas Eve spirit calms nerves and tempers. And it wasn’t until after the fact — when I was tucked into my father’s passenger seat — I realized I had, for the first time, managed to plug my water-balloon heart-hole. Maybe it was adrenaline, but in the aftermath of the accident, I had stopped crying for the first time in a month. And as I looked over at my father, who had driven two hours in the dark and rain to get me, I could see how parents must keep their hearts from completely collapsing: you learn to keep one hand on your heart… to plug the hole.

I now know my leaking water-balloon heart is a gift — it’s this emotional, soppy, wonderful mess that I spend a lot of time and energy keeping plugged. But during the season of lights and awe — during the sappy holiday movies — I let my hand down a little and release the plug for a bit. Because really, it’s a miracle I can plug it at all.

Thank God for fudge.

Church... and Why I Parent in the Pew

Our Sunday mornings seem to be predestined for chaos in our McMormon-sized family. Between baptizing four spirit-filled children in the bathtub (where they are dunked and we are sprinkled) and holy rolling them into unstained clothing with buttons, we are usually speaking in tongues by the time we have exorcised tangled heads of hair and have found eight enigmatic shoes. And then it’s a hail mary out of the drive way as we pray no one pukes on our attempt to make it to church on time. Needless to say, by the time we hit the pew, we have plenty of material for repentance.

Last Sunday morning my children were acting particularly un-angelic. The morning began with wailing and gnashing of teeth over everything— breakfast menu options, violations of personal space, and accosted senses of personal identities when Mermaid costumes were deemed inappropriate church attire. There were bad attitudes, fighting, and to top it all off, my youngest decided to stage a potty training protest on our new living room rug. Along with my cup of coffee, my patience had been reheated six times and then finally abandoned as we dashed out the door.

Of course we were late to church and therefore conspicuous members of the tardy parade. The usher led us to a “latecomer” pew, which meant my ill-behaving children would be in precariously close proximity to the pulpit. We awkwardly side-stepped and straddled our way into our seats and one hymn and a half-a-prayer later, I side-stepped and straddled my way back out for a potty “emergency.”

Back in the pew I shushed, I scolded for kicking, and I retrieved crayons from the woman’s hair in front of us. I looked down and realized I had forgotten to change out of my orange crocs before leaving the house. I made my son return money to the offering plate and then I pretended I was not related to the little girl shrieking, “Don’t spank me! Don’t spank me!” as my husband hauled her out of the service over his shoulder.

Suffice it to say, by the time the sermon began, I was not feeling very spiritual. I was sweaty and frustrated and pissed off. I wanted to be on a beach somewhere—alone. I wanted a doughnut and a nap. And I wanted quiet, well behaved kids who smelled nice. Kids like the one’s sitting two pews over from us whose shirts were tucked in and who weren’t trying to color in the hymnals. I wanted the adorable little children from the Bible—the one’s Jesus called into his lap and said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” I wanted those children. The well-mannered children with the pure hearts. The little children who wanted to be with Jesus, not the ones like mine who would prefer to watch cartoons on a Sunday morning.

And then somewhere during the sermon, I found myself thinking a little less about myself and a little more about Jesus and how he was a pretty observant guy. I realized Jesus must have spent some time around little children at some point, right? Maybe he had younger brothers or sisters growing up, or nieces and nephews. Maybe he babysat on weekends or helped out in the synagogue nursery. But surely, even just walking around he would have seen children running around. And he had to have known children have a propensity to track in mud, and yell and not come when they are called. He would have known children argue and throw tantrums when they don’t get their way. Which meant—as I sat and thought about it—Jesus knew exactly what he was saying when he said “Let the little children come to me.” Jesus knew when he called for the children that they would fight over who got to sit on his lap, that they would interrupt one another and talk out of turn. He knew they might not all be potty trained and might very well leave a big ‘ol stinky stain on his robe.

Around the closing hymn, while my children snored and drooled on the pew like a heap of sailors after an all night bender, it occurred to me Jesus didn’t just call the well-behaved children who don’t fall asleep in church. He called my children too.

This thought helped me a bit. It kept me from leaving my kids on the church steps with a sign reading “Free to Good Home.” It led me later that evening to open my Bible up to read the entire scenario of Jesus and the children which begins with, “Then the little children were brought to Jesus…” And my heart quickened because I realized there in the Bible were parents just like me—parents who had to get their children up and fed, who had to find sandals and wipe faces and stop for potty breaks and “count to three.” Here were imperfect parents with imperfect children—humble parents flying by the seat of their pants. Parents just trying to get their kids to see Jesus in hopes he would lay hands on them and maybe pray over them so they would sit still or sleep through the night. Parents who had faith—parents in orange crocs operating on a wing and a prayer.

Heal the World, Plan a Party

It is well known that one of the most important jobs a mother holds is that of throwing the themed birthday party. The themed birthday, of course, requires designating a subject matter the birthday child may or may not show an interest in—Batman, Dora the Explorer, Lil’ Wayne, or gingham plaid—and then incorporating the delegated subject matter into the party invitation, the decorations, the craft, the games, the cake, the drinks, the goody bags, the ribbons that tie the goody bags, the name tags tied to the ribbons attached to the goody bags, etc.

The themed birthday party is why, despite unemployment rates, there will always be a demand for grown adults to dress up in clown, dinosaur, and super hero regalia for minimum wage, and —at least in Central Florida—incur massive amounts of heat rash so two-year-olds can be thoroughly terrified on their birthday.

It is also a well-known fact that throwing a themed birthday party usually involves more planning than healthcare reform, which is good, because as we all know, the fate of mankind hangs in the balance.

One version of the book of Genesis imparts the importance of the themed birthday party.

“You know, Cain turns five in just eight-and-a-half months and I’m thinking I need to get started planning his themed birthday party,” Eve told Adam over a candlelit dinner of medium-rare wooly mammoth steaks. And then, refusing to accept Adam’s silence as disinterest, Eve announced over her kabob that this year’s party theme for Cain would be—wait for it—Apples!

“We can serve applesauce and have apple-bobbing games and—oh! —Cain could blow out his candles on an apple pie and I could even tie apple scented strings on the party bags!” Eve chattered on with the behaviors, heavy breathing and intoxicated euphoria only mothers who are planning a themed party or people on the verge of a complete nervous breakdown exhibit.

“Well? What do you think?” Eve, now flushed with excitement, asked her husband. At this point Adam set down his steak and stared at his wife wondering what the return policy on a left rib would be.

“Adam! Are you even listening? What do you think about the apple-themed birthday party for Cain?” Eve asked again.

If apples hadn’t been such a sore subject for Adam, he probably would have just done what dad’s everywhere do when their wife announces their child’s birthday party theme—he would have grunted, handed over that month’s mortgage payment, and made forty-seven trips to the store for juice boxes and ice. But even though Adam didn’t talk about it, he was still pretty sour on the subject of apples, which is why he told Eve she would need to figure out a party theme other than apples for Cain that year.

And, well, we all know how the story goes—Eve’s themed-birthday party spirit was crushed. Lacking momentum and a Target nearby, the alternative theme for the birthday party— teenage mutant ninja tortoise— just was not inspired. Meaning, the nametags tied to the ribbons decorating the party bags had nothing to do with the party theme. It was a disaster.

Eve knew the party was a disaster at the time, but it was not until years later, once Abel was dead and Cain was attending court-ordered anger management that the consequences and emotional trauma of denying the apple-themed birthday party came out.

As a mother, I take my responsibility as themed birthday party thrower very seriously. Today our prisons are filled with inmates whose mothers did not throw them themed birthday parties—maybe the color scheme was mismatched, maybe their mom screwed up and bought a Star Wars cake and Smurf napkins. Maybe the nametags, attached to the ribbons, tied to the goody bags did not coordinate. I shudder to think, but maybe there were no ribbons. I am determined my children will not become another statistic and for this reason I will spend massive amounts of time planning themed birthday parties. Sure, I may lose my mind in the process, but if I’m lucky, maybe the arm restraints of my straight jacket will coordinate with little ribbons, which will match my nametag...

Gutter Balls in Parenting

When your kids are on summer break and it’s raining for the third day in a row and your husband has locked himself in the bathroom, pretty much anything sounds like a good idea.

Which is why we went bowling.

Our friends called to say the root canal and lobotomy drive-thru was at capacity, so they would be joining us for bowling, along with their three boys. My husband and I were ecstatic to have these particular friends join us because they brought our parent-to-child ratio up to meet fire codes and — more importantly — because they are the type of parents who let their kids pee on the grass. In other words, we think they are really good parents.

Anyway, fourteen midget clown shoes later — we were in bowling business.

I was happy to learn when you ask for fourteen midget clown shoes, the chain smoking sixty-year bowling-alley bouncer with emphysema will give you the bowling lanes on the far end away from everyone else, including the arcade games.

It’s great. Unless you have a handful of four-year-old little boys who think arcades are crack and will pretty much gnaw off their arm for a fix. So we promised the boys if they would just stay at our end and bowl, we would let them stick their fingers in the ball return. Interestingly, we found four-year-old girls feel about waxed bowling alley floors the way boys feel about arcade games, which meant the girls were delighted to writhe around on the flooring like amoebas with pigtails on acid.

Well, between the finger dismembering and floor humping, the kids managed to do a little bowling. They would heft, heave, shove and lob the bowling balls. Sometimes the balls made it down the bowling lane ricocheting off the bumpers. Sometimes the balls just stopped, begging to die a peaceful mid-lane death. But sometimes the balls actually hit a few pins and then we celebrated.

When the parents weren’t kissing maimed fingers, mopping my female offspring off the floor or retrieving bowling balls from the arcade, we bowled in a grown-up lane. Well, the other parents bowled in the grown-up lane. As a sucky bowler, I focused my energy on complaining like a baby over how we should get bumpers in our lane and how my clown shoes didn’t fit — or come in pink.

It was in the grown-up lane “The Incident” occurred. “Daddy, Daddy! Bowl between my legs!” my friend’s four-year-old boy called as he straddled the opening of the lane.

“Don’t move!” I heard my friend call to his son. The next few seconds played out like a movie reel in slow motion. We watched as my friend drew his ball up and then back. And then we watched — stunned — as he released the ball… directly into his son’s shin. The movie reel went back into real time with the sound of the boy’s wail. I tried to assemble the pieces of what had just happened, but essentially it boiled down to one thing — at the last second — the kid moved.

“I didn’t think he was going to actually roll the ball,” I whispered in shock to my husband next to me.

“I thought he was going to bowl around him,” my husband said scanning the room for video cameras and a DCF swat team.

“I didn’t think he was going to move,” my friend sighed later that night over adult beverages. His shoulders and eyes were low in parental defeat. I certainly wasn’t going to be the one to point out the obvious — that his first mistake was to expect a four-year-old little boy to not move. So instead I offered up, “Yesterday, I punished my daughter because I thought she was whining — only to find out she was crying because she slammed her fingers in the car door. See? We all screw up.”

I watched him consider this, but then he just looked at me and said, “Um, yeah. I just rolled a bowling ball into my son’s shin.”

In the grown-up parenting lane, there are no bumpers. As parents, we just have to heave, push and lob ourselves down the lane and sometimes we clip a pin or two, but let’s face it; we spend a lot of time in the gutters. And to top it all off, our shoes usually look ridiculous.

If the authorities reviewed the video feed of “The Incident,” they would see how my friend immediately ran to his son and swept him up into his arms. They would watch as my friend pulled his child into him and how he held him and the pain inflicted — tightly. They would see the way he stroked his son’s head and spoke quietly into his ear. They wouldn’t be able to hear the words he spoke, but they would be able to see them — I’m so sorry… let’s get some ice on that… you can have lots and lots of candy. In less than two minutes, they would watch a four-year-old little boy smile, kiss his dad, and bound back to the arcade.

My friend is a good parent. Like all good parents he got caught up in the moment and made a bad judgment call. As good parents, we do drop balls… right into the gutters (and sometimes, we even bowl them into a shin). But a good parent is aware they spend time in the gutters, and rather than dismiss or make excuses, good parents get humble and teach from there. I believe the gutters are the very places where kids are shown how to own mistakes, apologize, and ask for forgiveness. Good parents know they need grace and teach their children how to show it — and, subsequently, receive it. Good parents know life is less about raising kids to bowl perfect games, and more about making sure they know how to handle the gutters they will inevitably find themselves in. A good parent will show their kid how to apply ice to wounds, and, if it helps, offer up candy to make amends. And on those days when we actually manage to clip a pin or two — good parents get together and celebrate.

Will Work for Food

I’m pretty sure I’ve had something to eat since having kids, I just don’t actually remember eating it. Ok, well, yes, I suppose there was that piece of chocolate cake last week—the piece of chocolate cake I ate behind the closed and locked doors of my bathroom, toes pulled up under me, perched on a closed toilette. Not exactly one of my proudest moments—I remembered thinking as I quickly polished off the last of the cake from the cake pan and assessed myself in the bathroom mirror wiping away crumbs of chocolate evidence from my mouth and my shirt—but completely necessary.

Believe it or not, I have not always eaten my food on commodes. Come to think of it, there was also a time when I did not dart and dash in and out of buffet lines a like suicidal squirrel on the road either. And there was even a time when my husband could take me out for a nice dinner alone and not feel compelled to tip our waiter sixteen percent as a means of apologizing for the fact that I have polished off nine packets of crackers and the entire breadbasket before our drink orders are placed.

My plate used to be just that—my plate—and the food on it? Mine as well. This fanciful notion is not the case anymore because apparently either my kids’ umbilical cords are connected to my plate, or my plates are all rigged with Krispy Kreme-like signs lighting up whenever I put food on them. Either way the response is inevitable:

“Mommy? What are you eating?” They ask circling my plate containing the identical contents of their own.

“I’m eating the same thing as you,” I will say as I try to pull my plate closer to me knowing the life span of the food on my plate is now coming to its end.

“Can I have some of yours?” they will ask drooling and poking. And from my plate, I will feed them foods ranging from spinach to lima beans—foods they historically stage hunger strikes against and gag over when served upon their own plates, but from mine—they will lick clean.

As a result of this phenomenon, like all good mothers, I have learned to adapt. I even did a little reading up on speed eating in case I could glean some methods for improving my technique. I came across Sonya Thomas who is known as the “Black widow” of professional eating. She caught my interest—one—because she set a world record when she consumed 41 hot dogs and buns in ten minutes. And—two—because she weighs 98— pounds. However, I was disappointed to learn that although she is the holder of 38 world records in speed eating, and can (impressively) eat 11 pounds of cheesecake in nine minutes, she does not have any children, which sort of puts her in a different league than me. Also is the fact that when Sonya Thomas eats fast, she wins trophies and acclaim. When I eat fast, I win indigestion and heartburn.

I have learned I can stage distractions and glean a few bites from my plate—

“Look kids! Over there! I think I just saw a monkey!”

I shovel in an entire pork chop.

“A monkey! Where Mommy? We don’t see a monkey!”

I swallow.

“No? You know what, maybe it wasn’t a monkey. Maybe it was just a squirrel. Sorry about that.”

“Mommy what are you eating?”

Sigh.

“Darling, I am eating air.”

“Can I have some of yours?”

I suppose there are some logical solutions to this problem. For one, I suppose I could just stop feeding them from my plate. But, for some reason I am maternally programmed to be partial to the little hyena pups with their big eyes, yaps and wagging tails. Maybe one day when they are teenage hyenas and they grow hair under their arms and their hyena laughs are at my expense and they say,

“Hey, Mom—Are you going to finish that?” Maybe then I will growl at them to back off my plate. But for now, I allow it. After all, I just don’t have the energy to fight it— I’m too hungry.

100% Natural

Are they natural? This question is posed to three types of people— strippers, chicken farmers and mothers of multiples. My sympathies to those mother’s of multiples who happen to be chicken farming strippers, because, really, where do you even begin? As neither a stripper, nor a chicken farmer, I cannot attest to the frequency this question is posed of those professions. As a professional mother of multiples, I can say that on average, I am asked this question more often than I am asked, “would you like fries with that?”— And let’s just say I am no stranger to a fast food line. Most often, strangers who corner me, as I am held captive in the check- out line at the grocery store, pose me this question.

“Are they twins?” asks the middle-aged woman in front of us. I notice the tomatoes, tofu and bottles of water in the basket she holds over her arm are all marked, “organic.” I am aware she is referring to my boys in their matching plastic green rain boots and impish grins caked in free sugar cookies, who are now hanging from my monstrosity of a grocery cart filled with processed cheese, disposable diapers, synthetic sugars and enough red dye number five to illuminate bourbon street. And as much as I would give my left pinky toe to be able to answer her question with a simple, “Yes,” and avoid the onslaught of questions I know will follow, I am aware of the eight eyes of the honesty police just waiting for their mommy to utter the little white lie. Rather than subject myself to their interrogation, I offer up the patented answer with a sigh,

“Actually, these three are triplets,” I indicate my daughter and matching boys and then wait for it.

“Triplets? Oh, my!” she responds and then very helpfully looks at my youngest daughter who is scaling the candy display and points out (just in case I may not be aware),

“And then you had another one!”

“Yes,” I reply, waiting for her next question as I salvage a loaf of wheat bread that has supposedly been genetically altered to appear white. I reposition the Michael Jackson-like bread before my daughter who is decked out from head to toe in polyester princess garb can squish it.

Sure enough, her question comes just as I smell an aroma that causes me to rack my brain as I try to remember if I applied my aluminum-plated deodorant that morning.

“Are they natural?” the Birkenstock clad woman asks looking at my children and not my chest—my first clue that unlike the stripper or chicken farmer, she is not inquiring as to the composition of my breast.

Are they natural? Well, I suppose it depends on whom you ask. The doctor assigned to help me through my high-risk pregnancy may or may not have inferred my children were not, as he so delicately put at our first meeting, “Women were made to have babies, not litters.”

Some might consider the sheer number of narcotics used to keep my children from being born prematurely, or the steroids they were given in utero to mature their lungs, to point to their un-natural state. I would be the first to admit that there was nothing natural about the ventilators, wires, feeding tubes, beeping monitors and artificial lights they spent the first six weeks of their lives cocooned within.

And then I take into account the formula I fed them was not natural breast milk, the baby food came from jars and not my own personal garden, they have been vaccinated, and bathed in soap that I buy in bulk at Sam’s Club, rather than the all natural soaps found on the shelves of a whole foods store. I have handed them toys, which I am sure have been painted with lead and then dipped in kryptonite in a sweatshop overseas. Their bottoms have donned only disposable diapers and their current diet consists primarily of massive amounts of peanut butter—the good kind that doesn’t require an industrial mixer to stir every time it is used.

Are they natural? The inquiring woman with all natural sea kelp wants to know and I become aware as she readjusts her burlap purse that it was not I who did not apply deodorant that morning.

Are they natural?

I know the tears my children cry over a skinned knee are very natural tears, as are the temper tantrums they throw when they don’t get their way. The fear they feel when they wake from a nightmare and their impulse to call for me seem natural. They struggle with the natural issues of sibling rivalry, arguing over toys as they vie for attention. They prefer ice cream to vegetables, and can deconstruct our entire house in an hour if they are cooped up too long. My children are curious, energetic, and emit and unbridled laughter that can permeate any wall—even if it is laced in leaded paint.

I am asked this question often, and so I am ready to give this woman my answer. I am about to respond but my daughter tugs on my arm and pronounces that she needs to pee—“right now, Mommy!” I see that my youngest daughter has peaked Mt. Candy and is now pocketing packs of gum like a clepto monkey. I start again to answer the woman but one of my son’s is ogling the bikini-clad bodies of celebrities on the magazine rack and my other son, who is now standing next to me points to the inquiring organic woman next to me and asks in perfect four-year-old diction,

“Mommy, why does that lady smell stinky?”

I’d say it doesn’t get much more natural than that.