Why I will never be on Reality TV

Our life as a missionary family would make a good TV show. There’s drama and adventures, unusual characters and comedy (Rey), and the camera loves Elijah. However, my day today exemplifies why I will never be on a Reality TV show (if I was ever invited).

I woke up too early (thanks, Elijah), and my first thought was of the inch of dirt in our water tank, and the unsettling reality that when I bathe, wash dishes, and my hands to be “clean,” I’m really washing everything with dirty water. This put me in a bad mood.

Faced with a day of incarceration stretching before me, I turned on High School Musical and lay on the couch while Elijah found ways to make the house messier and messier.

By 11am I had worked up a sufficient scheme to regain the car. I would take Elijah on a Rapidito to AFE, where I would then pick up the car, a couple of things from the grocery store, and return home. However, when I arrived at AFE I discovered that Rey had taken the car seat out of the car. Naturally I did not see it sitting by the door when I left.

Soon a ½ hour trip had become two hours (after going back to get the car seat, giving the teachers a ride into town, etc., etc) and we were infringing on the Red Zone: nap time. I should have given up then.

By the time we made it into the grocery store parking lot, Elijah was just closing his eyes for a nap.

“Elijah, wake up! I’ll give you ice cream if you just stay awake long enough for us to get home!”

(The 1 ½ - 2 hours that Elijah naps at home are a sacred time. Sometimes I actually get to read the Bible without it being snatched away and pages torn out. I guard this time religiously, although it rarely seems to happen. Thus, I am considering switching my devotional book to a children’s illustrated, cardboard bible. And now you see the depth of my spirituality as a new mother.)

Consequently, we missed his nap again today. But I am getting ahead of myself.
The ice cream was not the best idea. Elijah discovered that it was much more pleasurable to wipe it all over the grocery cart than eat it. I think he is a budding artist.

So, the reason I will never go on Reality TV is this: it might catch the twenty days of the month in which I, and my family, are sufficiently put together. But more likely it will catch moments such at these:

- Me licking the dirt off the ice cream so that Elijah wouldn’t eat it.

- Blaring Kanye West on the ride home, to an impressionable toddler. Yes, he may learn to swear, but I hope instead he learns: “That..that..that which won’t kill us, will only make us stronger!”

- Me with disheveled hair, sweating, with washable marker all over my white t-shirt, grumbling at Rey

The irony of my determination to never go on Reality TV, is of course, that I divulge my dirty little secrets on a public blog. But we laugh and learn, right?