It’s been raining non stop in Chicago. Lots of unseasonably cool temps, lots of rain, lots of what Seattle must be like in the Spring. It’s supposed to be about 80 degrees and happy sunny here this time of year, but it’s been raining for long days and hovering around about 60 degrees. ugh. The kids have been cooped up, I have been cooped up, even the mosquitos have been cooped up. So today when the rain let up at about 1:00 and the clouds yielded to the sun by 2:00, we were outside instantly.

We met up with my parents to attend a festival in their town. This is one of my favorite things about my parents, they love festivals. My whole childhood they drove us all over the midwest to attend art shows and craft fairs and gardening festivals and wine festivals and fall festivals. Winter carnivals in December too. It’s what we did. We’d eat buttery ears of corn, tap our feet to some local band, take a spin on the tilt-a-whirl, buy a jingly bracelet from some local artisan, and then head home all fat and happy. I would not trade this for anything.

So when the sun broke though we were on our way to the summer festival where my parents live. It was good fun. They had Kettle Corn and inflatable jumpy things for my boys to flop around in. True weekend bliss for this rain soaked family. After bouncing and jumping for an hour, hunger kicked in and we headed over to get some snacks. We are nothing if we are not a snaking family. My little green heart wished that there was some local farmer’s market selling carrots and kale. But instead we sidled up to the ice-cream and cookie booth. Not too shabby either. 

We kicked back at a table with our little festival delicacies. The band in the center of the park was a Jimmy Buffet cover band. So, we sang along to Cheeseburgers in Paradise and smiled as the kids pretended that a hose running through the grass was a balance beam. It was sunny. The ice-cream was melting. It finally felt like summer in Chicago.

After the ice-cream we headed to the carnival section of the festival. Big festivals can be amazing dichotomies. Today there was an art show, some fundraisers, music in the park, schools out promoting educational programs, and then there were the carnival rides. A blur of lights, flighty ride attendants, and 80’s metal big hair band music blaring. I think I heard Poison. Can two different worlds come closer together? But the kids love the rides and the games and it is amazing fun to watch them zip around on a little metal kiddie roller coaster. They have smiles plastered across their faces and so do we. Who cannot smile at a 3 year old screaming at the top of his lungs with pure adrenaline and joy. My Dad is a champ. He shelled out a small fortune in ride tickets for my children.

Then we hit the games. Again, pure fun for the kids. Pure anxiety for me. As they fished for prizes and shot hoops I stared at all the toxic toys hanging from the ceilings of the game booths. Random stuffed teddy bears, giant plastic balls, inflatable mallets. We played the games that guaranteed a winner. This delighted my kids of course. And as my little ones snuggled their strange stuffed toys, filled with toxic junk, made in China, sold for a steal, and walked through the festival with pride, it was all I could do not to tell them to keep the toys away from their eyes and not to smell them.

They are now sleeping. They are snuggling blue whales and yellow ducks. This makes me nervous. But how many times do you rain on their proverbial parade? Where is the balance? We’re not normally stuffed animal toting carnival types, but on a sunny day with my mom and dad and my kids and some Jimmy Buffet music, I was tempted to let them try to win the life-sized pink bunny that hangs from the most challenging game. It was a fabulous day!

So, tonight they snuggle the stuffed toys. I’m going to be okay with it. Someday when they are not looking they will disappear to a landfill. This I am not overly happy about. I want to try and reconcile this. I will likely find some way to do penance for the planet. I will likely toss out a few more flowers or seeds of some sort. Maybe buy a carbon offset. That could work too.

Regardless, I am aware. I am thinking this through. I had a fabulous day with my family. It came with a small toxic price tag. One I was willing to pay and make up for later. Bummer that so many things come with these price tags. A carnival. Something simple. Something fun. Something once again made in China. So yes, we won, but it cost us too. “We’ll take the yellow fuzzy duck on the left.”

Today was the third nice day in a row here in Chicago. You would think we’d all been handed a million dollars or at least a free Snickers Bar. Everyone is outside and we are all trying to make up for a six month sentence indoors. Since we just moved into a new place this past November, our neighbors haven’t really seen the Bianchi family in action yet. Sure, we’ve exchanged pleasantries over the fence while holding a bag of groceries, but winter is cold and who wants to size up the new people or chat it up when it is snowing. 

But now, it is warm and we are outside racing big wheels up and down the driveway at 8:00 am (sometimes earlier). I of course know that my children are raving lunatics, but now my new neighbors know this as well. Today we took a friend home from school with us to add to the chaos. Apparently there was not already enough. So the afternoon at my house meant that three boys (two five year olds and one two year old) were racing all over the driveway. Our rockstar babysitter Miss Megan was here with her 8 month old son, so was another friend with her four kids. Lots of people, lots of chaos. We even had a cousin stop by later that night.

First, the boys were riding their big wheels with sunglasses on. It was very cloudy. They told Miss Megan they were welding. This was why they needed sunglasses. Okay. By 5:00 the driveway was scattered with random toys, chalk, orange cones, sand toys, rocks, wood chips, empty sippy cups and a cell phone. Everyone was screaming and racing their bikes and big wheels as fast as they could so they could run over and smash all the toys in the driveway. My two-year old managed to blow out the training wheels on his mini-huffy. I kid you not, he literally wore out the plastic training wheels so all that was left was the core. So there was that debris to run over as well.

The baby, when she was not running to me seeking cover from the chaos, was drawing on her face with a piece of blue playground chalk. That and crawling through the dust on the floor in the garage. So she ruined her hand-me-down pants (Nia, if you are reading this, I promise to scrub the stains before we give them back). After my friend left with all her kids and it was just us again I surveyed the scene in the garage. Of course we had the kids clean up all their stuff. Which in my mind should mean that they neatly park all their ride along toys and pack everything away all nice and orderly. In their minds it means that they throw everything in a pile and sprint inside for dinner.

I took a mental inventory. We completely trashed several toys today. It was literally like somebody let the monkeys out of the cage at the zoo. And I do my best not to operate a zoo-like home. We take baths, we use utensils. But today it was like too much fresh air or something cliche like that, they just went insane and I did not stop them. They ran everything over and smashed it into oblivion. Part of me said “no big deal, it’s mostly garage sale stuff or stuff we got for free anyway.” Another part of me said “sheesh, what am I teaching my kids about caring for their things, junky or not?”

As I went outside later and saw chalk bits and random chunks of training wheel all over my driveway I was embarrassed for myself (and honestly totally paranoid about what my new neighbors must think). And yes, this is where I get all introspective. But seriously, kids all over the planet don’t even have toys and mine are running theirs over as fast as they can. And yes, we live in a part of the world where kids have toys, but if we trash them they still end up in the landfill. I should probably teach them that. Instead I mostly just yell things like “hey, don’t do that,” or “if you scare your sister again you will go to time out.” Occasionally I throw in some good mom-guilt and holler “don’t you know that kids in Africa don’t even know what a big wheel is!” That is one of my favorites, that and “your daddy is hard at work making money to buy you toys and here you are wrecking them.” But really, this is not a logical way to approach the issue.

Without sounding uber-eco, I should actually take the time to talk them through what happens when we wreck something and then throw it in the trash. Where does the garbage man take it? They would actually listen to this logic because right now the garbage man is one of the coolest public figures they know. Forget Obama, he does not drive up to your house each week with a loud drippy truck that hauls off trash bags and couches. This would be a good place to teach them that what we do with our stuff matters to the earth. Of course, in bigger ways, it matters to our community and to the people who gave us that stuff and it matters to God and to me and to the example we set for others. But all this ties into the planet too. 

So next time we start rolling over the chalk and slamming into the wagon I plan to stop them and chat about planet friendly reasons to take care of their stuff. And since it is finally spring, next time will probably be tomorrow morning at 8:00 am. We may be a little late for preschool because of this, but I think it makes for a good lesson.