Spiderman

We have been sick, sick, sick here.  How about you?

Ours is the upper respiratory cough, fever, stuffy nose.  I finally made it to the doctor for some meds.  I have asthma so this respiratory stuff goes straight to my lungs and takes forever to clear up.

My son, Sean, has been the most recent casualty.  He was home from school yesterday and I had daydreams that today I would go to the grocery store and get all kinds of house stuff done since he would be back at school today.  

Most moms, I think, are the boo-boo-ers.  The cuddly moms who are all snuggly and fuzzy when their kids are sick.  Not so much for me.  In the middle of the night, if you get sick, you wake up daddy.  And if you require more than one day of staying home, you had better hope like hell that Daddy is staying home too.

Sean is home today again.  My  husband is home too with weather being unpredictable and not feeling 100% either.  Is he out in the living room snuggling with the sicko kid?  Nope.  On the phone.  

That is just how it is at our house.  If you want to survive to adulthood you had better be the squeaky wheel.  Or else, listen to what I say the first time.  If you don't listen to me tell you that climbing on that thing is dangerous and get down, and you fall?  You are going to hear me tell you, "I told you so" long before you  hear me getting the keys to take you to the ER.

We have had one ER trip in our history.  My boys have been climbers and daredevils their whole lives. So much so that when they were in cribs I would walk out of the room to wash my hands and walk in exactly 60 seconds later to dismantled beds, mattresses propped up on the changing table and someone at the top of the homemade "slide" ready to yell "Cowabunga!!!"

The cribs had said on the box, "Easy to Assemble!!!"  "Needs no tools!!"  They should have read, "Can be dismantled by non-verbal toddlers quicker than you can go potty!"  I would have had a better understanding for what lie ahead.

So one night after we had finally removed the "Easy to Assemble!!!" cribs from the bedroom and were down to mattresses on the floor with a fitted sheet, I stepped out to potty.  I heard a scream and ran back in to blood.  Everywhere.

Okay. Not everywhere.  Just gushing from my youngest son's eyebrow.  I am looking around the room and there isn't a sharp corner in sight.  And asking him how he did it when he was so busy screaming and bleeding, was counter-productive.

To this day, I really have no idea how he cut his eyebrow.  There were just walls, carpet, mattresses, and fitted sheets in the room with his two brothers.  But we were off to the ER and came home with 3 handy-dandy little stitches in his eyebrow.  He will have the scar forever.

I think this may be one reason I am not so cuddly or hovering.  If I did, I would be MUCH grayer than I already color over.  These boys are determined to make this life interesting.  

We have moved on from the mattresses on the floor.  We decorated the room over the head-shaped hole in the wall.  We have big-kid beds.  There are stuffed animals and art on the walls.  

But one night, not that long ago, I went in after bedtime to see if everyone was out yet.  My oldest boy was perched, with his hands spread out against the wall like Spiderman, and standing on his tippy-toes on a 1 inch piece of trim at the top of a high chair rail we had installed.  Scooting.  Along.  The.  Wall.

Seriously.  

Don't take a picture

I have been reading my favorite blogger, People I Want to Punch in the Throat, and realized that I have a punch to throw out there.  Not so much zombie-related, but definitely something that most people may not realize happens.

Did you know that sometimes, when a person with multiples ventures just about anywhere outside of their home, random strangers want to take their pictures?  

I know, right?

Take any adorable child out on a normal day and the paparazzi are generally not there to snap photos.  Now multiply that child by 2 or 3 or 4 or more and you have yourself a little mini circus event worthy of scrapbooking!

For example, I attended a local art fair on a sunny Sunday afternoon with my husband and 4 kids.  We made the mistake of using our 4-seat stroller.  

This thing is really quite wonderful and made a huge difference in our life.  These multiple seat strollers have jogging wheels, stadium seating (seriously!), and would roll with just a finger tip.  

On the other side, the brake was pretty touchy, it needed a special rack added to our minivan to haul it anywhere, and if I loaded or unloaded children incorrectly, the front end would flip up quite abruptly.  But the kids didn't mind so much when that happened....

I loved that I could take my 4 toddlers anywhere by myself.  I hated that it drew so much attention to us when we were out.

So back to the art fair, we were chatting with a friend and I noticed this tall, fish-legged, man in shorts aiming his rather elaborate camera at my kids.  I didn't stop talking but just scooted around and bent over my children in the stroller to 'adjust the straps'.  In this way, I was aiming my quite formidable hiney in his direction.  Not exactly a lovely picture.

I kept talking to my friend when I saw this jerk walk around to the other side of my stroller so he could get a better picture!  

So I did what any mom would do.  I started speaking loudly to the man asking him what he was doing!  Yeah.  My friend was mortified and quickly disappeared!

The weirdo with the camera looked pretty shocked that I might not want a stranger to take pictures of my children.  Then he started lying to me  explaining to me about why he needed to take our picture, he wanted to show his daughter the stroller, blah blah blah.  Whatever, Mister.  I don't believe for a moment that you want to show a picture of this stroller to your "daughter."  Unless she is planning (HA!) on having triplets, quadruplets or quintuplets, she has no need for this stroller.  

I told him the name of the stroller (Runabout) and to look it up online.  Then I said that I didn't want him taking pictures of my family and to please move along.  

This all happened a few years ago.  My memory has faded, but now, in my head, this is what the d-bag looked like:

I know.  Totally ridiculous.  And while this is not the douche canoe who tried to take our picture, I did snap this while on vacation in Florida.  As a side note:  WTF??

But I digress.  We strolled along for a few minutes and tried to recover from my outburst.  My husband quietly chided me for making a scene.  We really aren't usually those people.  But we had drawn a crowd and though I wasn't sorry for calling out a complete stranger, I was a little mortified at the unwanted attention.

We pulled up to the concession area and settled the kids with some fried concoction and another gentleman walked up with his large camera.  This dude actually asked if he could take a picture of my children.  I smiled, thanked him for asking, and said, "NO."

Because we are NOT a rolling sideshow.  We are NOT here for your viewing pleasure.  We are NOT selling tickets.  We are a family who wants to get the heck out of the house together.  It takes the logistical and tactical training of a small army to make that 2 hours happen.  We had to haul 2 diaper bags and that was the first time I had done my hair for real in a week.  Leave.  Us.  The.  Hell.  Alone.

Thank you.

If you are wondering why strangers snapping photos is such a hot topic with me, I am happy to explain.  In the multiple birth world, there are many weirdos each year that try to pass themselves off as being parents to multiples.  Some of these losers are in it for all the 'free' stuff and donations.  And if you want to dedicate your life to obtaining free stuff, it does exist.  But you aren't going to get a free van for flashing around some photos of your 4 babies.  There might be some formula and diapers available.  If you are a true con artist, you might set up a donation account while securing your special little section of hell for all eternity.  

Most of the scammers just want attention.  And with social networking, a person could garner quite a bit of attention.  I know this because it happens every year that I get a couple of requests from a fake multiple parent.  If they can get a couple of real multiple parents to friend them, then others will accept the request because they trust the ones that have already signed on. 

There have been several more notorious cases over the years.  People who did set up donation accounts and bilked unaware donors out of several thousand dollars.  It is despicable and leaves a bad taste in the mouth of every multiple mom.  

I don't know where the photos that people snap will be used.  Maybe it will be just a, "Hey! Look!!  I got a picture of a family of quadruplets at the local art fair!" moment with a few friends.  Maybe, they will crop me out and photoshop themselves in and create some sick website with their own names on the picture of my children.  Either way, I hate it.  It feels intrusive and wrong.  I can't figure out why anyone would want to take a picture of MY children for themselves.  They don't know me or my family so they should back the hell up.

Mothers of multiples who have had the experience of having photos of their children lifted and reused nefariously report that it is shocking and horrible.  I do not want to have that happen.  

I don't have a neat little bow to tie this post up.  It is just a sort of PSA.  If you see a family of multiple birth children out and about, don't take a picture.  Just don't.