What noise?

Moms always seem to know when their kids are getting into trouble. Usually it is the silence that tips us off. If kids are being too quiet they are nine times out of ten getting into some sort of mischief or at least thinking about. Yes, there is definitely something special about a mom's ears.

When I hear an unattended infant cry it literally incapacitates me until someone takes care of him or her. If this infant is crying but is being lovingly cared for I can totally tune it out. I attend preschool board meetings and usually someone has a new baby. That baby will start to fuss at some point during the meeting and the mom will apologize. The consensus is usually the same, we love hearing the newborn noise when we know we don't have to be the one to worry about it. The noise our kids make when we are in a group is similar.

When a group of moms get together and the noise is reaching a level uncomfortable for most mere mortals a mom can easily ignore it and have a perfectly wonderful conversation unless the person the mom is talking do has no children present. If this is so the other person will start to look uncomfortable, shift around in their seat, look at you and any other mom like, "aren't you going to do anything about that?!"

Truthfully? We moms are just glad that our kid isn't asking us for anything. We are extremely focused on the adult conversation we are having at the moment hoping like hell no one starts to cry and in so doing risks breaking the spell that has been cast over the group of children. The "we don't know our parents are even in the room"spell. Basically we will let the noise get to the level where we have to yell over them and it is continuous before we say "OK, calm down everyone." Even then we exit as soon as possible from the situation, hoping the spell will be recast.

Tonight we went to dinner at my Mom's friends house. Her husband, daughter, son-in-law, two grandchildren and another friend were there. It was a festive atmosphere. The kids are all around the same age with the oldest and ring leader being my L at 6 years old and the youngest being a beautiful little girl, E, all of twenty-two months. They have all met at least once or twice before. My kids began to remember them as we pulled up to the house. We could see A, the 4 year old boy, running up and down the yard yelling "They're here! They're here! When we got inside his grandma told me that he had been asking every minute for the last ten minutes when we were going to get there. At first it was the usual bashfulness while everyone sized each other up, but it didn't take long at all for all the kids to become reacquainted. Things were pretty calm before dinner while my kids played with all the different toys and the other two tried to decide if that was okay. Then we had dinner or maybe we should call it the refueling. As the adults finished dinner a parade ensued with the younger crowd. L leading of course. Wire strainers on their heads, marching, yelling and my H blasting a single note from a recorder over and over and over and over. The youngest, E, bringing up the rear in startled amazement that this type of thing was actually happening. I could see my Mom getting a bit uncomfortable with all the noise but I was just glad they were entertained and everyone was able to talk above the noise so I didn't try to stop it. I knew it really got to her when she offered H a dollar to stop. He looked at her and without missing a beat said, "No". The other Mom and I laughed about the turn down of the dollar because we reserve that for emergency situations only but more so it was because we really didn't care about the noise at that point. We were just glad we could sit, drink a glass of wine and maybe listen to and partake in at least a piece of an adult conversation before we had to go home and put the kids to bed.

So if you are ever in the situation where some kids are being loud and their moms appear to be oblivious, try to be sympathetic. The moms most likely are refueling in their own way. Trying to grab a little bit of grown up time before they go back to being primarily a mommy. Or you could try offering the kids a buck. Good luck.