I had a truly horrifying thought this morning. Do you realize, whatever goes on in your  house, you children very likely view as normal? Normal, as in this is what other people experience. And very likely, these children will grow up and marry other people (people who hopefully don’t live in your home) and carry on with normal activities.
This profound thought occurred to me this morning as I had gathered half a dozen or so children around me to clean out our furnace room (which we use for storage). And by “help” I mean, Jubilee assisted me and the other “helpers” contributed by: sighing loudly, suddenly needing to use the bathroom, playing with Apollo (who, by their estimation suddenly needed one-on-one supervision) and reading books we unearthed. It was during this very productive time when I found another dead mouse (which I proceeded to put in the garbage) that I realized my children probably think it’s normal to find random dead mice in your house.
And maybe, just maybe, this isn’t the healthiest world view to have.
In my defense, we have two cats whose job it is to kill mice. And they do. It’s just, much like my children, they don’t always clean up after themselves. I have tried positive rewards and chore charts, but those darn cats just won’t get with the program.
So I present to you…
Things my kids think are normal:
1. Underwear in the pantry. Don’t ask me, it wasn’t mine. And maybe they don’t really think it’s normal, but no one had much of a comment when I swept it out.
2. Watching their mom pull a LEGO minifigure out of her bra…and then hearing her admit she had no idea it was there. You’d really think I’d notice something like that. Before my four year old needed to fish around for it.
3. Putting soap suds on one’s face, then “shaving” it off with a  toothbrush. <<< This was the kids. Not me. Or Chuck.
4. Sweeping under the couch and finding syringes in various sizes. Apollo really likes to drink out of these, so we offer them in a variety of sizes and substances. Don’t worry, these are for Apollo’s tube feeding- no needles included.
5. Startling awake at night and checking to  make sure your little brother is breathing. And getting worried if you can’t hear him snore.
6. Taking mustard and other condiments to school in the above mentioned syringes.
7. Playing in sewer pipes your dad brought home. From work.
How about you? Anything your kids think is normal? Help a girl out, will you?
What THEY think is normal? Oh, I hardly know where to begin! See my blog! Lately, normal is spitting massive gobs of toothpaste in the sink, where it coagulates, but insisting that “you touched my glass” at the top “with your dirty fingers” (which are, take it from me,spotless) so I won’t drink my milk.
That is the tiniest tip of the iceburg.
It sounds like my kids are qualified to marry yours.
Hee hee! Anytime. They’re a little too young, but hey, in a few years . . .
When my three year old was pretend playing and mentioned “…because I had a stoke”. Life with a sibling that had a stoke at 3 months old has become our normal.
*sigh* My kids still tell me excitedly when they see a baby…EAT. To them it is a novelty. They remember the tears, the screams, the fights just to get a bite or two in Apollo before his tube. I can totally relate to this one.
Playing house and then when they have enough babies, whoever is playing the daddy will have his surgery so there are no more babies.
Semi normal but still very funny.
Oh, that is FUNNY. Recently shortly after a friend’s husband got snipped, her five year old announced to my daughter that her mommy was pregnant. Um…not true and not possible 🙂
Unfortunately 4 and 5 are completely normal at our house too and 1 and 3 wouldn’t be unheard of either. The same with finding dead mice in random places. My cats aren’t impressed with incentive charts either.
Mine either. Only our cats leave theirs in the sandbox, along with other…”treasures”
I am laughing out loud at the dentist’s office!
Normal in our home? Riding into town with *stuff* under your feet, between you and your siblings, and on your lap…planning your midnight snack during dinner, just in case you don’t come away from the table full…being third in line for the next size of underwear (boys only!)…spending close to an hour unloading the groceries on pay day. Okay, that’s it-I’ve got to go do my own blog on this. Too much fun!
Post a link here when you right it! Let us all laugh at you for a moment 🙂
I read your list and saw # 6 and thought that is genius!!! Seriously I don’t have a small container for things like that but that would work perfect. Completely not normal but seriously smart.
It was Adalia who came up with that idea…and we’ve been using it every since.
I agree…#6 IS genius! And #7 sounds fun! When I was young my parents, my grandparents, my aunts and uncles, and several family friends all got talked into buying land in Pueblo, CO. The idea was that the lots would one day be worth big money as Pueblo expanded. Yeah, that didn’t work out, but Pueblo prices, taxes, expansion, etc were always a big topic of conversation around me. It wasn’t until many years later that I realized that not every family in the world had a plot of land in Pueblo!
When I was a kid I thought everyone had an “Indian name” since my great grandma (who was part Cherokee) gave one to each of her grandchildren.
Love it! 🙂
We lived for a time on my grandparents farm. We didn’t have sewer tubes but we had a huge round tube of fiberglass that we would roll around in. There was also an old stove there by the creek. It wasn’t unheard of to use a piece of siding or a random car door to go sledding. I thought having cars & car parts all up the “mountain” was normal. My dad tells me that when they sold the place a few years back, there was a tree growing through the engine compartment of an old ford truck. We also took baths in the creek. I recently asked my mom if we had running water in our house because the tub was always full & I remember taking baths in an old galvanized tub IN THE CREEK. There was once even an old cot frame along the creek that we used to escape (on ice) from the pigs that got loose one winter. It never occurred to me that these things weren’t normal.
Number 5 is pretty normal over here too!
Makes sense, Devon…exactly why my kids don’t even blink when Owen is taking his meds or eating his Keto foods.
My BIL has a friend that trained his cats to bring him dead mice. For every mouse they bring, the cat got an entire can of tuna fish. It was expensive to begin with. He has not seen a live or dead mouse in his house in several months. 😉
My kids think doing the laundry ends when they take it from the dryer and dump it on the sofa. I have to encourage them to help sort it and take theirs to their rooms.
Yelling ” Sponge” when you see mom and dad kiss, or see it on TV. It was our code word to change the topic when talking to our older teen kids about stuff they need to know but the 6yo sponge didn’t, it has gotten a bit out of hand. That everyone has 20 plus cousins to play with. That finding a turtle in the bathtub, a chicken in the living room, and brand new baby kittens on your sisters bed are all very normal things. Lining up for dinner, to fill your plate before sitting down. That at family events, adults eat first, then the little kids, then the girls and finally the teenage boys.
Serving at funerals; lots and lots of funerals (as altar servers at the Masses of Christian Burial at our local parish).
Haha, these are cracking me up! Loving the comments too 🙂 Our biggest is probably having designated ‘stinky time’ and openly (constantly) discussing bowel movements and fiber content.