Streakin

© 2004 Christine Louise Hohlbaum, All Rights Reserved.

It took two years, six months and five days. We thought the day would never arrive, but it did. It was the day my children realized they were both here to stay. No, baby brother isn’t leaving. No, big sister isn’t either. Confronted with this inalterable fact, my children changed their tactic.

Now that this day has arrived, my husband and I are fully unprepared. What do we do? Our children get along famously. In fact, they get along so well that my husband and I feel outnumbered. There are two of them. There are two of us. We still feel in the minority.

A typical morning goes something like this.

The first thing we hear from our crooning son at 5:55 a.m. is “Hot chocolate! Hot chocolate!” His pleading turns to a direct whine which pierces our eardrums to a fully awakened state. We are alert. We are scared. We cannot believe our eyes. It is still dark out, and we are up.

Once our toddler has gotten his calcium intake for the day, we relax some, but the impending excitement leaves us a little unsettled. We know it is only a matter of minutes before our other child will stir. We listen as she pads up the stairs from her basement-level bedroom (yes, we put our kids in the basement, but it’s not what you think. There are ground-level windows and lots of light, honest!). She silently eats her honey toast, gathering strength for the oncoming fun she and her brother will have. They live for torturing us before 8 a.m.

It becomes a race. Who can eat the fastest and gain enough momentum first to carry out the plan of wrecking the house within minutes of awakening. This activity is enhanced by the immediate stripping of all clothing. Once the last pair of pajamas hits the floor, the streaking begins.

Two-year-old Jackson typically does a Sumo-wrestler-cum-disco-fever type move to get his nudist juices flowing. He then proceeds to bounce from couch to couch, touching the coffee table lightly as he hurls himself into a pile of pillows on the floor. Four-year-old Sophia joins in the fun, egging him on, imitating his dance moves, and screaming up the stairs to our bedroom (yes, our bedroom is on the SECOND floor – note there is a floor between us and the children – we planned it that way!). Once there, she and her brother hop on our carefully made bed for a round of “Dumps Dumps”, a game which looks like you’re jumping on a pogo stick, only there’s no pogo stick.

We do have rules in our house. One of them is no streaking when the shades go up. After a few minutes of hopping from bed to the pile of bedcovers (now on the floor), we whip open the shades to blind the kids with sunlight. Thankfully, it is getting lighter in the mornings in Europe now. We haven’t long before we can put an end to their antics altogether.

My son’s latest strategy is to “accidentally” spill something on his clothing. Zip, there go his pants! Flip, there goes the juice-sodden T-shirt. Boing! Off go his tights. He hates them, and it gives him great pleasure to leave them lying with their innards exposed like a snake skin during molting season. It is at these times I am grateful there are only 24 hours in a day. I suppose one morning we will both wake up well before they do. Then we can get our revenge and cry “Coffee! Coffee!” from the top stair.

Christine Louise Hohlbaum, American author of Diary of a Mother: Parenting Stories and Other Stuff, has been published in hundreds of publications. When she isn’t writing, leading toddler playgroups or wiping up messes, she prefers to frolic in the Bavarian countryside near Munich where she lives with her husband and two children. Visit her Web site: http://www.DiaryofaMother.com.

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