Sandbox Insanity

So a few months ago, I bought a sandbox for my girls to play with in the backyard. As far as tactical parenting mistakes go, this was one of my biggest.

It seemed like a simple solution to a rather annoying problem... my girls like to dig. I can't blame them, they have watched me for years out in my garden, planting flowers, shrubs, and trees. I even went so far as to buy them cute little gardening tool sets complete with gloves, spades, rakes and sun visors. (See what an enabler I am???? Geez, I was BEGGING for trouble!) So what did they do with these cute tools? They would follow me around and dig up what I had just planted. They would "help" me weed the garden by pulling up one or two weeds along with all of my annual flowers. They would take buckets and bowls from their indoor play kitchen, fill them with mulch from my garden beds and dump them out all over the patio and grass. They were kids being kids for sure, but they were making a huge mess.

So I had this epiphany... I'll buy them a sandbox. Yeah, that's the ticket. They won't dig in my mulch anymore, they'll dig in the sandbox. Great!!! Their digging will all be confined to one little space. Yeah, that's it. I'll buy a really cute one that has an adorable circus tent fabric, shade cover on it to keep them shaded in style while they play. I am the smartest mother EVER! I'll order 500 pounds of sand to keep them entertained all summer while I sit on the patio drinking sangria and toasting to my profound intelligence. What could possibly go wrong???

After the first week, I realized it was messier than I thought it was going to be. Occasionally, the girls and their friends would track sand in the house and sand would sometimes end up outside of the sandbox and on the patio. But it was nothing that a broom and a well-placed towel inside the back door to wipe their feet couldn't handle.

After a month, I was definitely starting to question the purchase.

Two months and 200 pounds of sand tracked into my house later, I am now ready to admit defeat. I have sand everywhere. According to my daughters, the best part of having a sandbox is figuring out all the places you can put sand other than inside a sandbox. And my girls are creative! They would dump it all over themselves, throw it at each other, feed it to their brother, pour it in their pool and water table, dump it in my garden, bring it inside the house and the straw that broke the camel's back, turning the entire sandbox into a mixing bowl in which to make chocolate chip cookies (with bucketfuls of mulch as their chocolate chips of course). It's no longer a sandbox; it's an eyesore.


I am the type of mother that doesn't let my kids use paint in my house because it's too messy. I rarely let them play with play-doh, and when I do it's always the 30 minutes immediately preceding the arrival of my cleaning lady. Whenever we get home from a trip to the beach, the first thing I do is vacuum all the sand out of my car. So why exactly did I buy a sandbox??? Don't get me wrong, I'm fine with sand inside my house if that house happens to be situated on a beach on Cape Cod or in the Virgin Islands.

So this morning I put it up on craigslist, giving it away to the first gullible parent that will haul the entire thing off of my property and out of my life. I'm not saying that anyone who owns a sandbox is insane (although I am implying it). What I AM saying is that someone like me, who is anal and can't stand a mess should never buy one. If after reading this you still think owning a sandbox is for you, come on by and pick mine up. It's yours free.

No mo' fo' sho'

So I'm done having kids. How can I be sure??? Step foot into my house around 5 in the evening and you'll understand. Not only will you see where I'm coming from, you may just pop in to your doc for a quick tube-tie to make sure this circus doesn't set up a tent in your home. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy. Blissfully so in fact. I love my life. I love my husband and kids more than I ever thought was humanly possible. I wouldn't change a thing... BUT three beautiful children is enough.

I don't know what it is about people always asking me the question, "Are you done?" It's the same stupid line of questioning that you get when you're dating someone, "So when are you getting married?" Then you're married and it's, "When are you having kids." Then you have one and before you're even sleeping through the night it's, "When are you having #2" and so on and so on. Granted, I realize that I never REALLY heard anyone ask me that last question, because I beat them all to the punch by having my girls 11 months apart. (see my Irish Twins post)

Ever since we decided not to have any more kids, it seems to have changed the way I feel about a lot of things. It's as if we've suddenly moved on to an entirely new phase in the life of our family. For a majority of the years that Mark and I have been married, we've been in the "expansion" phase where every few months or years we welcome a new member to our brood. It's a crazy and fun time but also very uncertain. It's filled with questions about whether to have a child, when to have one, how will you manage one, etc. It's remarkable how those questions and conversations can infiltrate every facet of your life from whether you take a job to whether you take a vacation.

Now we've moved out of the Expanding-the-Family phase and into the Enjoying-the-Family phase. And it's been so much fun. We can focus on creating a good life for the kids we do have instead of creating lives for the ones we don't. We can plan vacations and start showing our kids the world. We can see the light at the end of the tunnel when it comes to bottles, pacifiers and diapers. In fact, we've already started planning the huge party we're going to throw when we change our last diaper. Its tentative name? The "Happy Campers, No Longer in Pampers" party. It's going to be wild. We'll expect the police to shut it down.

It's neat knowing that our family is complete. The group is closed; we aren't accepting new applications. We're a party of five. Growing up, I always knew I wanted a family, but I never knew what that would look like years down the road. Now I know, because I can look around my kitchen table and I see all of their beautiful faces. It's an awesome feeling.