All My Egg in One Basket

I have two boys. I refer to them as “Irish Twins”… thought technically, they aren’t. I looked up the definition of “Irish Twins”. The children have to be born within the same calendar year to be considered as such. So mine aren’t, but before my older child turned one, I was already pregnant with the second one. I just like to use the term "Irish Twins" because I feel more justified about how busy and crazed my life feels most of the time. The early years were busy, and although my boys are able to buckle themselves into their car seats and carry their own back packs now, I am still incredibly busy, lots of tiny things, but especially Legos.
Why Legos? I’ll get to that later… bear with me.
My boys are very different children, with different passions (#1 trains) and (#2 perfection). They are close in age, so they are at different stages and places in life, but sometimes they hit milestones at the same time. For example, they both learned to ride their bike on the same day. Truly, I ran between both bikes, holding on to back of their little bike seats and as I let go, I watched them teeter away side by side. It was an amazing feeling and it was weird to have them both “get it” at the same time.
As a mom, I sometimes try to freeze and savor the moments. The moments pass by as quickly and as slowly (did that make sense?) as a child newly riding his bike in a superhero helmet; if you’re a mom, you understand and you know it’s true.
But I digress. Back to the point: this blog is called All My Egg in One basket, and I did mean egg… not eggs. Let me explain: For purpose of this blog, “egg” is a metaphor for motherhood. Yes, I have two children, but I am one person and the experience of mothering them is mine; it is my one chance at this. Mothering is rewarding and exhausting and I have to say that I wouldn’t have it any other way. I have thrown myself into the experience from the moment they handed me my screaming oldest son. I’m doing my best 24/7.
However, there are moments when my best just isn’t good enough. Sometimes I need the support of others.
And it is all because of Legos.
Man, they are tiny. Have I mentioned that they are tiny? And of course there’s the fact that some of those Legos are TINY! And they bounce and they are important to 7 and 8 year old boys. Legos are good for developing/maintaining fine motor skills. They are great for working at visual/spatial mastery and creativity beyond the directions that come in the box. They are colorful, versatile, fun, and I like them too.
I really like them until an important piece gets lost. It happens a lot. Just yesterday, my son had brought his Lego creation to school. Somehow from the time he left class at the end of the day until we arrived at our van to leave, a tiny gun was missing from the side of the ship. The custodian was vacuuming so we knew our time for resolve was limited. We retraced our steps. We re-walked the entire school. Up and down the hall… in the gym, in his classroom, his brother’s classroom, my classroom. Nothing. No gun.
We had finally resolved ourselves to the loss. But then, our school cook noticed we were desperately scanning the ground for something.
“What’re you looking for?”
“A Lego gun.” My son said sadly.
“A tiny one.” I added, exhaustedly.
“Did you look over by that truck?” She asked.
“No.” My son was fighting back tears at this point.
“I saw you there earlier. You were flying your ship.” She happened to look out the kitchen window at the perfect time to see him spinning around in circles in the front of the school. She walked over to the truck and looked down and suddenly, SHE found the tiny black gun. That helped my evening go much smoother I have to say. Thanks Kristi!
We used to play with Mega Blocks when they were very young. They are too big to lose, but this past Christmas we took the major Lego Plunge. They come in boxes of 850 pieces or more (AND EVERY TINY PIECE IS IMPORTANT- IT’S A PUZZLE) with visual directions. And Legos can be found on EBAY too ($18.95 for “a lot” of 200 Batman and Star Wars Legos from someone in Texas). It arrived today and before dinner the “lot” became two ships. The boys were having a great time and enjoying playing with Lego Droids… side by side. Not fighting… mostly. It was grand… until…
Until one of the Lego ships was spinning around in the bathroom (I don’t know why, it’s the smallest most crowded room in the house), hit the toilet, and broke into pieces. Everything was found but the tiny, tiny, tiny, Droid Helmet. Some mothers would look for the helmet and others wouldn’t. I think it all depends on what is going on at the time of Lego loss.
We have lost other tiny things. My younger son lost his tooth at school and then LOST that same tooth in his grandparent’s car. That very tooth turned up about a week later! Can you believe that? My older son lost his tooth at school and then LOST that same tooth on the bus! The bus driver actually found it while sweeping the bus that afternoon. Can you believe that? A little girl in my kindergarten class lost her tooth and then lost that same TINY tooth near the classroom door when we were on our way home. I found the thing under the door frame and had to slide it out with an untwisted paper clip. Can you believe that? I can. I’ve lived these moments and remember them vividly because in the life of a young kid, it is a BIG deal. Therefore, to a nearby adult, it had to be a big deal too.
My husband lost his wedding band into a snow bank at Christmas (right around the time the chickens started laying eggs). After searching for his ring repeatedly with a metal detector, he found it on the FIRST DAY OF SPRING! He proudly wears two bands now: the original one that he found (thankfully) and the temporary one that my mother “loaned” him from her jewelry box. It bothered him a lot when he couldn’t find his wedding band. It was troubling to him. It was frustrating to him. It was annoying to know there was three feet of snow sitting on top of that TINY thing for the entire winter. But it was found after all. As the snow melted, it allowed itself to be found.
And now as I type, my younger son is deep asleep near another tiny lost tooth- one that he lost today (of all days). He is awaiting the arrival of the Tooth Fairy tonight. And I will capture the moment. Before I collapse into deep slumber myself, I will go up and steal his TINY tooth, replace it with a quarter, and kiss his warm forehead, for the days of losing teeth are numbered.
I noticed that baby teeth and Lego Droid helmets are the same size! To both of my kids, they are equally important.
So, as a mother, I feel I need to do the best I can to treat all the tiny things with respect as well. I feel the importance too. If it’s important to my child, it has to be important to me too.
But the experience of mothering with Legos around makes my nerves feel as fragile as the first egg that came out of my chickens.
If you have ever read any of my other blogs, you know that I have a chicken coop. I wanted fresh eggs and so I (we) built the coop and awaited the arrival of chickens. They arrived (if you build it, they will come). My friend gave me two hens (Thomasina, named by my son the train fan) and Susan Salari (named by my son who likes The Lion the Witch and The Wardrobe) and then my neighbors added two more hens, (Odd Job and Plastic Bag II). Another two chickens came a few months later (Bob) and (Junior)... don't ask. So, we now have six chickens and they lay about two eggs a day. Perhaps one chicken is laying eggs, and other five are slackers.
-So I have to add here that just tonight I got three eggs… something must be wrong. They must have heard me blogging about their “slackerness!” (slakyness)? Oh, you know what I mean.
I remember the first ceremonial first egg; it came on the Winter Solstice (the shortest day of the year). This egg’s arrival cracked me up (sorry about the pun on the use of the words “crack” and “egg” in the same sentence). The picture you saw at the beginning at this blog is off that first egg. I held it with the almost the same wonder as a newborn. I gave it a bath and put it in a basket and took a photograph so I could remember what I was feeling.
This is what I do: I take the pictures. I freeze-frame the moments. Most of the moments are the ones you can capture on film, though some can’t be captured on film.
Take for example today. I wouldn’t have wanted to freeze-frame the moment I began to look for the Lego Droid’s helmet because I had to lie down on the bathroom floor and search. I took the baseboard off the wall. I swept dust bunnies. I shook out towels and rugs. I was ridiculous.
I typically pride myself on not being too obsessive about things. I don’t know what came over me today. Three years back, when everyone was flipping out about Thomas the Tank Engine and the fact that he had been painted with lead paint, do you think I worried? Nah. I actually knew people who put their entire train collection in boxes and shipped them off to have them completely replaced. I’m not that good; I’m not that on the ball. I just told my kids to keep the trains out of their mouths.
But with Legos, I get a little crazy. This past Christmas, we spent three days just working on Lego ships and Lego trains. I don’t even remember if we ate (kidding). But over vacation there was a day when two little neighbor girls came to visit, and when they came into the house, somehow the Legos went flying. I actually found the two TINY TINY TINY missing pieces. One was crammed in the cushion of the recliner and the other somehow ended up in the trash. Can you believe it? I don’t think I will ever understand how these things happen.
You can tell I’m into Legos. But I don’t take a picture of the structures that they make. Maybe I should start. I will probably forget the colors and shapes of the elaborate creations, and believe it or not, I will probably forget how it feels to step on a Lego in the middle of the night. Or I will forget how my sons can actually sit together and work for hours on one Star Wars ship and then proceed to playing an elaborate battle without actually arguing about how to fight.
But today, I had my favorite Lego moment. I just didn’t want to forget it, so I decided to sit down and write this blog.
I had been searching in the bathroom for about five minutes for the TINY Lego Droid helmet to no avail. I even called on Saint Anthony (patron saint of lost items) and I’m not even Catholic. Oddly enough, I managed to look behind the door and find the back of my earring I had lost at 7:30 this morning. All day, I used an eraser to hold the earring in place. That felt good. I ran my hand along beneath the baseboard. Nope. And then, I sat in the perfect position to locate the little black piece. Aha!
“I found it!”
“You found it?” My child asked. There was such gratitude and disbelief dripping from his voice.
“This is it, right?”
My son paused from flying his ship just long enough to wrap his arms around my neck and whisper into my ear, “You’re the best.”
I closed my eyes. I felt it. It felt good. I can be a good mom. I seek and I find.
I may not be able to get it together to box up poisonous trains and send them back to China, but I can crawl around on the floor and find TINY Lego Droid helmets. It’s all in a day’s work. It’s part of being a mom.

It’s the TINY things that count.