Today I wish I were in Savannah, looking at a green river while chugging a pint of green beer.  Actually, I’ve never had a green beer, but it sounds fun.  I’ll bet it ends up tinting your teeth a nice shade of mildew, though.  So perhaps it’s better that I am at home on this St. Patrick’s Day, doing all the normal mommy things I do.

            It’s just that even after three years of this, none of it seems remotely normal.

            Take, for instance, what happened when I picked the twins up from preschool today.  The kids spent the morning hunting leprechauns, but (shock!) came up empty-handed.   Leaving the school, we met a woman coming in with a double jogging stroller.  She had two babies who couldn’t have been more than 18 months apart, and one of them was clad entirely in green.

            My daughter saw the baby, and I could see the wheels turning in her head as she squealed, pointing at the green baby.  “Mommy, look!!!  A leprechaun!!!  A leprechaun!!!” 

            It always amazes me that my kids have such personality, and that they can talk and even make sense sometimes, but it’s when they say something so unintentionally or inappropriately hysterical that I want to look around and say, “Really?  This is my life?  This is normal now?”

            I’m far from Type B, but I no longer freak out when one of my kids eats a spider web.  I wasn’t super- happy when my son tried to consume a used rectal thermometer probe cover, but I didn’t panic.  When I found him gnawing on our dog’s favorite chew toy, I tried to think about the positives of more germ exposure.  Less allergies, right?  Then they ate two copies of “Goodnight Moon,” and my thought was, “Oh, good, at least it’s fiber.”

            Medical emergencies are commonplace.  I called poison control after my daughter ate a flower and learned that lantana leaves and flowers are ok to eat, but berries are not.  New Year’s Eve was spent getting my son’s scalp stapled shut in the pediatric ER after he went coffee table diving.  My daughter sledded into a tree face-first and I learned that snow makes a good ice pack in a pinch.  My son shoved a raisin up his nose one night and my husband and I got to perform emergency ENT style surgery to remove it using only a mag-lite and a pair of tweezers.  And lest you think all this mayhem is limited to the children, I have also had to call animal poison control.  Apparently if your baby is taking Prevacid, vomits, and the dog eats it, you should be worried. 

            An average day as a mother to boy/girl twins also finds me yelling things like, “No!  We do not touch penises!”  Things my mother said that I swore would never leave my lips have become gospel.  I say, “Because I said so!” and I consider that to be the ultimate valid reason for my kids to obey.  The other day I even yelled, “Don’t make me come up there!” 

I also lie, telling my children that for today, they can’t do anything bad because leprechauns are hiding all over the house watching them.  During Christmas I say it’s elves.  I tell them with a straight face that the dog chases all the monsters out from under their beds and that the shadow cast on the ceiling of their bedroom at night is a rocket ship, come to take them off to dreamland.  My daughter wanted Jordan almonds in a store and I told her she couldn’t have them because only people named Jordan were allowed to eat them.  When I’m out of parenting authorities to cite, I turn to J.K. Rowling, telling my kids that I can’t give them any more banana because we’re out of banana, and that food is one of the five exceptions to Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfiguration.  And to them, that makes sense.   

I wonder how long that will last?