The Boy Who Cried Concussion

     Anytime somebody in my house starts crying, My first reaction is always, "What did Devin do this time?" 

     A few nights ago we were all relaxing, watching Duck Dynasty re-runs.  And I heard a loud THUMP.  Then Dustin started screaming bloody murder!  The bedroom door flung open and in runs Devin.  "I didn't mean to hurt him!  We were just playing!"  Devin's always "just playing."

     Still in the bedroom, Dustin is screaming, "OH MY GOSH!  OH MY GOSH!  My head!!!"  

     I've learned by this point in motherhood not to panic. More than likely he's overreacting.  

     I went to check on the injured.  He was thrashing around in the floor, holding the back if his head, screaming.  

     I made him get up.  By the way he was acting, I was just sure he was bleeding profusely.  

     I was a little afraid to look.  But upon further inspection I found no blood, no knot, no cut, NOTHING!

     The story I got was this;  Devin and Dustin were not wrestling!  They were just playing but Devin doesn't know how to play without breaking something.  Wether it be a lightbulb, a plate, or his brothers head.  Something will get broke.

     I have always discouraged the boys from watching WWE.  For one, I think it's ridiculously stupid!  Two, no matter what boys watch, they think they need to play it.

     When Jimmy, my little brother was small, no matter what he watched on t.v., he "played to it."  

     Power Rangers, Dukes of Hazzard, Rugrats.  Didn't matter what it was.  He just had to play to it!  Thank God he didn't watch Americas Next Top Model!

     At one point our dad threatened to make him stop watching Power Rangers altogether because we were all sick of him kicking, punching, and karate chopping everyone in his path.

     So, the boys know that wrestling is NOT allowed at our house!  Which is really too bad.  Because wrestling is a blast.  But my boys don't know how to do it without causing serious bodily harm to one another.  

     After the incident with Dustin's head and the wall, I separated them and told them to "stay away from each other!"  Time out for unnecessary roughness.

Devins defense was, "He pushed me first." The truth comes out.  Wow!

     Dustin laid down on the couch and started to dose off.  He was complaining of being dizzy and light headed.  So Curtis told him he better not go to sleep.  Ya know, just incase he wasn't overreacting.

      For the next hour, every time Dustin got up, he stumbled all over the place and his eyes went a little crazy and he kept saying really strange things and crying hysterically.

     Daymond and Devin were very entertained by this Dustin.  

     After the 5th time of them laughing at him and him bursting into tears, I finally told him to just go to bed with me.  They couldn't bother him in there.

     So, we went to bed.  He lifted his head up once in a while, look around kinda goofy eyed, then layed back down.  He finally went to sleep.  I woke up a few times during the night and checked on him.  He was still breathing.

     The next morning he claimed that he didn't remember anything from the night before.  

     I finally said, "Dustin, look at me!  Why were you faking last night?  I know you remember."

     He lost it.  Died laughing and fessed up.  Yes, it hurt.  But maybe he had laid the act on a little thick.

     When I ask him why he would do that.  He just smiled, shrugged, and walked away.

      Me, being the good mom that I am, told him that liars go to hell and eternity was a very long time to spend with Devin.  Not really!  But I might use that next time.  Because I assure you, there will be a next time. 

     I did try explaining to him that if he was ever seriously hurt, we wouldn't know wether to take him to the emergency room or push him into a corner and ignore him.  

     I have learned that no matter how well you think you've raise your kids.  They're still going to mess up.  

     Wether it be a lie, stealing a candy bar when their 4 years old, spray painting the side of the house, or texting a potty word and denying it for a year.  (Yep...all Dustin) They WILL mess up!

     Guess I better go see what today holds.  Wish me luck;)

     By the way, Dustin's getting a copy of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" for Christmas.

     

     

Tumble Dry Low

     Note to self:  When a clothing care tag says, WASH INSIDE OUT, MACHINE WASH COLD, GENTLE CYCLE WITH LIKE COLORS, ONLY NON-CHLORINE BLEACH WHEN NEEDED, TUMBLE DRY LOW, COOL IRON...It doesn't mean, eh...it'll be alright to throw it in with a load of colored clothes.  After all, it is colored.  And I did turn it inside out.  So, the water was warm, and the dryer was HOT!
     Daymond didn't ask for anything for his fourteenth birthday.  Nothing!  But he had mentioned a time or two to me over the last couple of months that he would really like to have a Varsity Replica jacket.  Ya know, like the old letterman jackets we used to get with our letters on them in high school?  Well, now you can just go buy them in the store.  It's one of the latest "fads."
     I searched online for a few days before we ventured out to the Mall to find the perfect jacket.  After all, you only turn fourteen once.
     Who knew there would be so many to choose from?  Our first stop, Aeropostale.  I loved the ones they had online and they were only $20!  What a bargain!  Obviously everybody else thought so too because they didn't have any in the store.  Not one!  So we moved on.
     Next stop.  Old Navy.  They keep up with all of the latest trends, right?  I couldn't believe it when they didn't have Varsity Jackets!  Curtis said, "maybe they're not as popular as you think they are."  I rolled my eyes and said, "what do you know, you don't keep up on what's popular and what's not."  He went on to say he'd "never seen anybody wear one."  I told him he just needs to turn the t.v. on.  Ugh...men!
     Next stop, JCPenney.  We walked in and Dakotahs escalator radar came on.  "Mommy, do we get to go on the elevator?"  "It's an escalator sissy."  "Oh.  Do we get to go on the excalator?"  "I don't know.  We'll have to see where the men's coats are at."  "Okay.  Mommy now can we go on the elevator?"  "Dakotah, it's an escalator." "Can we please go on the excalator?" "Okay, let's go."
     JCPenney's had the jackets!  I had to take a moment to rub this in my husbands face. And explain that these stores carry these items because they're "trending" at the moment.  Yes, I always have to be right.  And no, I'm not proud of myself.
      They had two colors to choose from but neither jacket had writing on them.  Hmmm....that's not really what I wanted.  I picked one out, held it.  Looked at it.  Looked at the price.  It was $50. And said, let's go to a few more places and we'll come back here if we can't find one that we like better.  "Mommy, are we going back down the elevator?"  "It's an ESCALATOR Dakotah!"
     So, next stop.  Macy's.  Curtis said, "If they have them, there's no telling how much they'll cost."  But, we threw caution to the wind and headed to Macy's.  Momma was on a mission.  I was holding Dakotahs hand and Dad and Dustin were trailing behind.
     I was doing the bob and weave through makeup, lotions, and shelves when we came to a sudden hault! Dakotah was depending on me to guide her through the store, and I was just ready to get in there, find a jacket, and get out.  I had guided her alright...right into a shelf full of perfumes and lotions.  We knocked a couple of boxes off but even worse was the goose egg it left on her forehead.
     She instantly started screaming.  I'm not sure if she was in pain or if she was humiliated!  Dakotah does NOT like attention and the lady that was working, bless her heart, rushed over to us and said, "oh honey, are you okay?  Do you want to see a picture of my puppy?"  I was just waiting for my sweet little girl to kick her and say, "how is a picture of your dumb dog gonna make my head feel better?!"  But, for a change, she was on her best behavior.  She smiled and the kind Macy's lady gave her a sucker.  I said, "Thank you." And we rushed on to the jackets.
     Ah Ha!!!  There they were.  That was "the one."  He was going to love it!  I was hesitant about looking at the price.  So I slowly, like if I didn't look too fast it would be cheaper, lifted up the tag, and it was the same price as the ones at JCPenney.  $50.00!  Yaaay!!!
     I carried it around for a while.  Looked at other things.  Just to make sure that's what we wanted to get and right before going to pay, noticed a sign above the jackets "50% OFF."  SWEET!!!  God lead me to this store!  We just saved $25.  What a bargain.
     So, after making one more stop, we got outta there.  Our shopping was done.  Daymond would be thrilled.  He got his nice, new, Varsity Replica Jacket, a pair of Nike Elite socks, which might I also add were 50% off.  Woo Hoo!!  And a three pack of Nike basketball socks.  This was a birthday success.
     It's funny how things have changed.  There were so many of us grandkids on the Zimmerman side, that when we were small all our Grandpa George and Grandma Irene could afford to get us were socks.  I remember every year before we would go to our family get together, my mom would tell my brother Tim and myself.  "I don't care if socks is all you get, you smile and act like you're thrilled."  So, every year, that's exactly what we did.  When deep down, I was always hoping for a little something extra.
     Well, I was right.  Daymond was thrilled with his socks and jacket!  He's pretty easy to please.
     And....this brings us to today.  He got the sleeves dirty and needed his jacket washed for school the next day.  It was 9:00 p.m.  I was already doing a load of colored clothes, and although the jackets care tag did say, machine was cold, and tumble dry low, I've been known to bend the rules.  If a recipe says, eggs and milk must be room temperature, I'm going to use them straight out of the fridge.  If a walking trail says, do not walk on grass, you better believe I'm going to walk on the grass.  Yes, I'm "that guy" that parks in the handicapped spot to run in the store.  Don't judge me!  I guess I'm just a rebel without a cause.
    Daymond was going to stay up late and wash his jacket.  I said, "Don't worry about it.  I'll get it."  He ask me if I was going to dry it before I went to bed.  I assured him that if I didn't, I would get up early enough to do it the next morning.  He questioned me, "Are you sure it's okay to wash it with the rest of the clothes?"  "Oh yeah, it'll be fine. Do you know how many years I've been doing laundry? Now, go to bed!"  I washed and dried them that night and went to sleep.
     DAYMOND'S GOING TO KILL ME!!!  That was my first thought!  My second thought?  Oh my gosh!  I don't know everything and I'm NOT always right?!  This can't be happening!
     I went up stairs and in my sweetest "mommy voice" I said, "Daymond, you're going to be so mad at me."  He said, "What did you do?"  There's no telling what was going through his head.  "I shrunk your jacket. I'm sooo sorry."  "How bad is it."  "Um, pretty bad.  It fits me."  He just rolled his eyes and got dressed for school.  That was the end of it?  That was easy.
     This morning when Daymond got up for school,  he put his shrunken jacket on, smiled and said, "Ya know, it was a little big anyway.  I'm glad you shrunk it."  And just smiled at me.  Aww...my sweet boy.
     So, this was a teaching moment for me.  Those tags aren't just there for decoration.  They really do mean what they say.  And I don't know everything after all.
     Following directions isn't just for men and kids.  Lesson Learned.
   

And That's Why We Can't Have Anything Nice

      One evening Devin, eleven at the time, came out of the kitchen and very casually said, "Did you know that if you put a ball of aluminum foil in the microwave in sparks really big!?"  I said, "Yes, I'm sure it does.  Please tell me you didn't."  Guess what?  He did.  He said, "At first it just went spark, spark.  Then, it lit up all over!"  He was so excited.  I said, "Devin, what in the world made you think that was okay?"  He told me that they did it on Myth Busters.  Well, if they do it on Myth Busters why wouldn't it be okay?  Curtis, normally the strong, silent type, piped in and yelled, "THAT'S BECAUSE THEY CAN AFFORD A NEW MICROWAVE!!!

     What started from Curtis's rage, years ago, has turned into a joke that we all say (in daddy's voice) from time to time.  "And that's why we can't have anything nice."  Every now and then, Curtis's temper still flairs but I've kinda learned to roll with the punches.  That way, nothing ever really takes me by surprise.  Hence the numb look on my face when you see me in the grocery store.  Don't take it personal.  I'm just walking around on autopilot.

     Less than a week after moving into our house in Marshfield, I went into the back yard to check on the kids.  It's completely fenced in so they spend a lot of time out there.  What I was met with was more than a little surprising.  Keep in mind, we are only renting this house.  I stepped out the back door and on the big, red, outbuilding by the back fence one of our children had painted this:
NO GIRLS
Well, that narrowed it down to three.  Daymond, Devin, or Dustin.  There were also initials painted.
D.C
They all have the same initials.  So that's no help.  But upon further investigation, the word (can you guess it?)  Devin was painted above it all!  Did I really even need to ask?  
     When I questioned him about it, he said, "I don't know, we're making it into our club house.  I didn't think it was a big deal."  I didn't even know what to say to that.  Not a big deal?  Really?  I said, "Devin, we're renting this house!  Other people frown on you destroying their property!"  His response?  "Oh, we're renting it?  I didn't know."  Because if we owned it it would be totally acceptable for him to deface it.  
Welcome to a day in the life of the Coffee's. 
     Two weeks after moving to Marshfield, we let the boys have some of their "Seymour friends" come over and spend the night.  Including our own children, there were 10 total.  The only rules we really had were, don't be too loud after we go to bed, don't eat everything in the house, and if you play outside, only go in the back yard.  Sounds reasonable enough, right?  
     You would really think in our almost 14 years of parenthood that we would've learned to be a little more specific.  Like, "Do NOT use 

cardboard boxes and slide down the stairs!"  But, we can't think of everything and we must be completely unreasonable to think that they would automatically know that this wasn't acceptable.  So, guess who slid down the stairs and put a nice, big hole in the wall at the bottom?  If you guessed Devin, you guessed right?! 
     Curtis swore after this incident, they would "never" have company again, for the rest of their lives!  We make the most ridiculous threats when we're mad at our kids.
     But really what do they think?  What goes through their heads right before they make the brainless decision to do such things.  As I'm pondering this, a memory comes flooding back to me.
     I was fifteen years old, we lived in a single wide trailer house that my mom worked very long, hard hours to pay for while my friends and myself stayed there and wrecked it most of the time. I remember one day, my best friend Dawn Hutchins was over and we were running and jumping and doing head stands on the couch up against the wall. Things got a little out of hand and I ran, jumped, stood on my head, and put a butt sized hole in the wall!  I thought this was the funniest thing ever!  Not once did I think, mom's going to be so upset.  Or, mom works so hard to provide this place for us and look what I just did.  No, that's just not how kids are wired.  Yet, I expect mine to be different.
     So, maybe the next time Dustin sits the stereo in the second story window and pushes it out onto the sidewalk just to see what happens, or I catch them with the screen popped out of a bedroom window, and the trampoline pushed up to it sneaking in and out waaay past their bed time.  After all, they were "just jumping." 
     I'll remember, they're only kids for a little while.
         
    

   

     

     

The Art of Raising a Fine Young Man

I have three boys with three completely different personality's. Thank God!

So handsome:)

Daymond, my oldest, will be 14 next month. He plays the role of "Alpha Male" among our children. At 13, he is 6'2" and weighs 175 lbs. So, that role comes naturally to him. I recently found out that when he wants something, whether it be a peanut butter and jelly sandwich that his 9 year old brother just spent 10 minutes making himself, or the XBox controller that his 12 year old brother has, he gets it...one way or another.
I am not exaggerating when I say that Daymond eats enough to feed a small family in Africa. He's literally swallowing his last bite of breakfast and asking what I'm cooking for lunch. He say's it takes a lot to "fuel the machine." I say he's a hog!
Then there's Devin. The middle boy and (almost) teenager. Where do I even start?
This one spends, I would say, 80% of his life grounded. This is the same child that received the "citizenship award" every year during elementary school. "He's so sweet." His teachers would

Just look at that "sweet" face!

say. "He's such a wonderful helper." We heard at conferences. "He treats everyone with such respect." They crooned.
Well, Devin's in junior high now. Gone are the days of sweet, respect, and helpfulness. (we don't see these at home any way) There are times that I swear, he lives to torture his other siblings! If it weren't for this extra curricular activity, he would have no reason to live.
Devin has a whole lot of energy. He loves to play sports, ride bikes, dig in the dirt, catch bugs. Pretty much anything that a real boy likes to do. That's where you'll find Devin. I've recently figured out that the more dangerous, the better. I heard him, our 9 year old and their friends from down the street screaming in our back yard. I looked out the kitchen window to check on them and saw Devin doing a flip off of the peek of the garage onto the trampoline. I ran out the back door and screamed, "DEVIN!!!" He slowly walked up to me with a smirk on his face. I said, in a frantic voice, "What are you thinking?" He said, "What? Nobody got hurt! Did you see that? It was Awesome!!!" That's Devin in a nutshell.
Then there's my baby boy, 9 year old Dustin.
He's so sweet and always ready to lend a helping hand. He's my one child that, if he see's that I'm not feeling well, will offer to rub my head. Or if he notices that I'm overwhelmed with housework, he'll ask if there's anything he can do to help me.

My sweet baby boy:)

I'm not saying he's perfect. Far from it. The jury's still out on who spray painted yellow dots on the side of the house with bright yellow spray paint, even though Dustin was caught, red handed, with yellow paint on his finger. He also still deny's, 6 months later, that he texted a dirty word to his older brother from my cell phone. Even though we know that he's the one that had the phone at the time that the text was delivered. But when interrogated by Daymond, he still cries and swears it wasn't him! So who knows, maybe it was the dog!

With all of this bad, comes a whole lot of good.
I was stopped in town Saturday and it was brought to my attention that, while we weren't able to attend Daymond's football game last week, he stopped late in the game while the two teams were tied, knelt down on the field and said a prayer in front of his team mates and all of the other people. That's a pretty bold move for a 13 year old.
Devin may act out at home and torture and torment his siblings, which I hear is completely normal. But he gave up one of the best friends that he had made in a new school because he was making racial comments to some other kids in their class. Devin told him that he wasn't going to be his friend anymore if that's how he was going to treat other people. And that we didn't believe that way because we were christian's. The boy didn't stop. So Devin stuck to his word. An equally bold move for a 12 year old.
I'm proud of my boys. There are times that I think, do they hear anything I say to them? Why do I waste my breath? But I know, at the end of the day, it's getting through. And that makes me one happy mama!