Sunday night we attended Grandpa Bill’s retirement party.

He was retiring from one of his two jobs, the mayor of Riverwoods. It is a suburb about 30 miles north of Chicago. Riverwoods is a unique community. Each lot sold must be at least 1 acre. It keeps the privacy levels up. For many years Grandpa Bill and Bubbie lived in a prairie style Humrich house that backed onto a forest preserve. It was normal to pull into their driveway and see deer standing outside.

Bill is a rare politician in that he is completely unpretentious. In fact, the entire time I’ve known him, I’ve never heard him mention to anyone that he is a Mayor, a position he’s held for 14 years.

He also had a strong sense of principle for this position. Once, without realizing it was a village car, we asked to borrow his SUV to move some bigger furniture. He politely but firmly said no, the car was property of Riverwoods and it would not be right to loan it out. I gained a lot of respect for him that day.

I noticed immediately when we arrived that, besides one other couple, we were the only ones there with kids. The other’s couple’s kid was around eleven. When you surround yourself constantly with families with small children, you forget that this messy, chaotic time in your life is short. The majority of your life is lived in the adult world where there are standards and rules of conduct.

We were greeted with a mix of delight, awe, shock and disgust. Bubbie had already told everyone about Ben’s fall out the window. Which made me a bit insecure. I’m sure everyone was thinking I was a bad mother and curious to watch us with our kids. Well, we did not disappoint.

Sam banged on the table and practiced screaming during Bill’s speech. Ben colored all over the table cloth. And later, when Adam was taking Aaron for a walk to calm him down and I was covering the other three kids, I thought it would be a good idea to change Sam into his jammies at the table. I got quite a few looks for having a naked baby, but nothing was worse then when I pulled off the diaper and realized all too late that it was filled with poo. I may be pretty far gone when it comes to what is acceptable in public, but I know changing poo diapers at the dinner table is a definite no-no.

Bubbie and Bill sold their beautiful Humrich and are moving to Arizona next month.

Yesterday the twins turned one. We decided to celebrate today so I have a long post locked and loaded where I wax poetic about how cute they are. I planned to follow it with the proverbial photo of them covered in their first taste of frosting.

But, instead of the planned celebration, Ben fell out of the window waiting for Bubbie to arrive and half the party went to the emergency room.

When they took Ben he was in hysterics, but Adam smartly thought to undress him and take a look. We didn’t notice anything alarming, but I did find it scary that he was gibbering nonsense and wailing for so long.

I’m happy to report by the time they got checked in he was back to his normal self, ordering Bubbie around and dancing so much he set the heart sensors off and had all the nurses running.

They didn’t even bother to X-ray him. Anyone that happy can’t be seriously hurt.

Cupcakes for breakfast, anyone?

My right ankle has been swollen and feels like I’m stepping on a bruise for about a week and a half.

It happened right after I upped the exercise last Wednesday. I decided to run to the gym, about 30 minutes, then do some HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training), then some weights, then lunch with Adam, then run back home. My ankles felt sore, but I didn’t think much about it. These new Vibram Five Finger shoes often stretch my muscles in new ways. I assumed it was just that.

But I tried running again when my Mom got in on Friday and I was in pain. Especially when I started HIIT. But I still thought it would go away. Must have bruised my foot, I thought.

But it’s still here a week later. Still swollen, still limping.

Adam grilled me on my injury. “Is it a sharp pain or a dull pain?”

“I don’t know, what is the difference?”

This was followed by a lengthy discourse about the difference between sharp and dull pains. Finally I picked dull.

He proceeded to pepper me with questions until he finally fell silent. After what I thought was him exercising his brain, he turned to me and said, “I don’t know. I’m not a doctor.”

Neither am I, but nowadays everything is on the web, right?

I did some research. Most likely not a bruise, but a stress fracture.

You know what they do with that? They put you in a boot.

The universe has a really good sense of humor.

It seems like every time I start a sentence with “I never…” as in “I’ll never be the kind of mother that screams at their kids in public” or “I’ll never let my babies cry themselves to sleep” it comes back and bites me in the butt. Like someone or something is out there listening to me make judgements on other people and secretly planning retribution.

So perhaps I shouldn’t have been so superior when it comes to my sister’s house keeping skills. Whenever my mother visits her, she cleans out her entire kitchen.

“Three jars of peanut butter were open AT THE SAME. Can you believe it?” My mother would call and tell me later.

My kitchen would never be that disorganized, I thought. So there is no way my mother will be rummaging through my kitchen cabinets rearranging it to her liking.

Which is true. Mom always said I keep an organized kitchen. Unfortunately, my clean kitchen is exactly how I found myself across the kitchen table from this this afternoon…

Having your mother reorganize your underwear and socks is much, much worse than her organizing your kitchen.

“Do you wear these, Nikki?” She asks while holding up a black thong.

She was so proud of herself that she suggested she organize Adam’s underwear drawer tomorrow…

So, it’s been a week. Are you wondering if I’ve kept my word to stop screaming?

Well, I haven’t been perfect. But I been surprisingly good. Giving up yelling actually didn’t feel like I was giving up anything at all. It felt like freedom.

I feel like I’ve woken up and taken a valium every morning. Without the possibility of screaming, my blood no longer rises. Confrontations no longer escalate until my heart is beating in my chest and my face is red.

Instead I have to get creative in order to get my point across.

Sometimes, I am good. One morning instead of screaming at Jack to get dressed for the zillionth time, I sat down with him and tried to figure out what the stop up was. Turns out he couldn’t decided what to wear. So we did a little process of elimination and he happily got dressed shortly after that. I felt very happy I dodged what could have been a tense moment.

Sometimes, I am bad. If you can’t yell, you find other forms of punishment. And in the absence of yelling, those other forms of punishment happen more often. Seeing how great it is to stop yelling, I wish I could eradicate the other forms of punishment too. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s possible to get rid of all the uncomfortable and dreadful moments of raising kids.