[su_heading]Parents Need Children[/su_heading]

I was peacefully sitting at my desk writing when a nagging compulsion to phone my children came over me. I was meeting my in-laws in Vail the next day to retrieve the boys but felt that something was not right. Thumper answered the phone in tears. It appears that his high energy was spinning slightly out of control and Grandpa was laying down the law, thus confirming my belief that my boys can be difficult, no matter who is raising them.

On our last night of romance, Baddy and I decided to watch a movie and the only thing on Pay Per View was Revolutionary Road. Baddy began snoring within the first five minutes. I would have carried him to bed so that I could watch in peace, but his 185 pound dead weight body was no match for me.

The phone rang a few times but when I finally get the chance to sit down to a film nothing can interrupt me. The last time I was watching a film, in the middle of the day, a neighbor came by for trash bags and I made Hootie-Hoo deal with it. I am certain she thought that it was odd that I never came to the door.

When the movie was over I got a phone call from my sister. Like the devoted sister she is, she had been hunting all over for me to tell me that Thumper was in the emergency room with his grandparents in Denver. In her super sleuthing manner, she discovered that I had sent an email to a friend at 8pm, a clue that I was probably home.

Hanging up the phone, I felt sick to my stomach. Thumper had sliced his foot open on a garden divider and needed thirteen stitches. We talked on the phone as the doctor sewed his sutures and Grandpa told stories of pulling out his own stitches when he was younger.  Thumper definitely has inherited the badass Livingston gene which is good since in the past three months he has sliced his foot open twice and chipped his tooth. We will be reaching our high deductible in no time.

I rushed to meet my in-laws at the drop off point at a McDonalds off I70. After five days without my little ones I was filled with heart flutters to seen them and there my little gremlins were. I soaked in the sight before entering the scene. For a second, I couldn’t believe that these sprite little boys were mine.

My reverie screeched to a halt when Baddy’s niece sweetly greeted me by telling me that she had barfed all over Vini-man.  My smile stayed frozen on my face as the boys lunged over to me and started battling for mommy territory. Axel leaped in for prime real estate on my lap and Hootie-Hoo was desperately attempting to tuck himself under my arm when in hobbled Thumper on crutches. I was met with his beautiful smile that lit up McDonald’s. Was that strapping young man mine?

Feeling indulgent, I let them have Oreo shakes. Consequently, Hootie-Hoo and I spent thirty minutes in the bathroom stall singing and pooping.

Grandma and Grandpa left and immediate chaos ensued, we lost our dreamy Axel, Hootie-Hoo had a meltdown from all the sugar and started chanting that I don’t love him and Thumper was frustrated that he could not keep up with us on his crutches. I kept singing the song by the band, Soul to Soul, “Back to life, back to reality”.

We drove home gagging with the stench and so I put on Lithium, Thumper’s favorite Sirius station, to ward away the pain of reality. I flew onto I-70 with a loud, “yeeeehawwww” and it was then that I had an epiphany that when with my children I feel completely alive, albeit slightly crazy, but totally present. No, I cannot tend to my creative desires at my every whim and yes there is always somebody that needs tending to and the boys are extremely sensitive to me, and often difficult to handle, nevertheless, they are extensions of me and are my life.

We drove home singing loudly and when we went to bed they snuggled as close as they could to me. My three little puppies were home and I felt remarkably alive.