I've Done This

I've gone weeks, maybe even over a month, without washing my children's bedding.

Geez.  Give me a break.  There is just so much to wash that sometimes I completely forget about their bedding.  Alternately, there was a two to three month period where I washed their bedding in hot water every Saturday because I read that was a good strategy against...oh, I can't remember now...something about the flu or the common cold.  Geez, there's just so much to remember about taking care of kids that sometimes I completely forget what kind of perfect mother stuff I am supposed to be doing on a daily (weekly, monthly...) basis.

I just used the dictionary

Can't put much of a story together tonight but I would like to share this:

1.  These are paper dolls Tulip made of me and my husband, Gabe.  They are supposed to be from the day we got married - a fairy tale filled with wonder, I'm sure, in Tulip's fantastic imagination.
These renditions are terrific because this particular paper doll set comes with over a dozen dolls of various skin tones and about 300 clothing pieces and accessories.  And, in case you didn't know, Tulip's Papa has a thing for purple shirts.  She must imagine that he wore a purple shirt at our magical wedding.  Of course.

2.  I did use the dictionary tonight.  I was commenting on a friend's FB post and needed to write "margarine".  Yup.  Didn't know how to spell it because I can't think of any other occasion in my life where I needed to spell "margarine".  I try my best to avoid reading the word "margarine".  I love using my dictionary.  It's so...old school.  So renaissance.  (I do know how to spell that - ha!)

3.  I'm happy to announce that since I have started my career as a blogger this summer, I have posted 50 little bitties.  (according to Blogger spell check, "bitties" is not a word but I am making it one)

4.  This is what my husband and I actually looked like on our wedding day.  Compare the hair of the paper dolls with reality.

Shhhh....

I'm hiding from my daughter.

Luna has got it in for me tonight.

Monday night is movie night but we got a late start on movie night so it's just "episode" night.  Wolfie wants to watch the next episode of Eon Kid (gotta love Netflix) but Tulip doesn't want to watch it.  Some new scary characters were introduced recently.  She wants to watch The Secrets of the Furious Five - it's 24 minutes long.  Perfect.  Wolfie gets to watch his episode on the computer; the girls settled in front of the tv for Kung Fu Panda.

The big kids know the routine and don't give us any grief.  Pajamas, good-night milk, brush teeth, pee, hugs, kisses, go to bed.  What!?!?!  You're a teacher and an excellent mother; don't you read any books to your children before bed?  YES.  Every single night except movie night.

The big kids go to bed.  Luna is sitting on the bathroom floor for some reason.  Oh wait, the reason is that she's 2.  She tells me she wants to watch Eon Kid.  Oh, poor Luna.  Sometimes we make decisions too fast around her and she's smart enough to know what's going on while she doesn't know what's going on.  You know?

I tell her that she can watch Eon Kid tomorrow after breakfast.  Apparently this is one of Papa's new perks in the morning while getting ready for school.

Luna is thoughtful for 10 seconds and then says...."I want breakfast."

This is hysterical and a complete conflict at the same time.  I try to get her into bed and she tells me at least four more times that she wants breakfast.  I go to Gabe.  I tell him where her head is at.  I am part of a cycle of wants that she can't break right now.  I tell him that he has to rewire her little brain.

He tells me, "Take your wine.  Go in our room.  Close the door - she won't go in there; she'll come out her and I'll put her back to bed." 

I love teamwork.

And wine.

And two-year olds but not necessarily in that order.

The Gift of the Magi

1.  I have two pair of dressy black pants I wear to work.  Two.  Sometimes I might want to wear these pants to, say, a family party.

2.  One of these pants is that type of cotton where you can wash and dry them, but if you don't remove them immediately from the dryer they are beyond wrinkled.  I don't iron much.  So I have to either remove these pants from the dryer immediately which really can never happen or I have to save them until I want to wear them and put them in the dryer for 10 fluff minutes.  Then remove them immediately.  This is a bit more reasonable since I am usually in the process of getting ready to go somewhere important, like work, and the fact that I am applying mascara in my underwear is a pretty good reminder that I have some pants somewhere - ah ha!  in the dryer.

3.  We have a hamper in our bedroom.  There is also a plastic laundry basket on top of the dryer, in the laundry room obviously, where we put "nasty" stuff such as dishrags, napkins, pee pee stained little pants, etc.

Now that you know all this, do you know where my story is heading?

I found my black insta-wrinkle pants in the dryer when unloading it.  So I folded them neatly and draped them over the edge of the laundry basket, which was empty.  My thought was, "I am going to wear these to the Zellerbration on Saturday so I'll fluff them when we are getting ready to go."

Saturday morning, Luna decided she wanted to wear underpants.  This is a "thing" going on right now.  She was about 90% successfully wearing underpants by the end of summer but then Mama went back to work and the puddles starting appearing so we switched to full-time pull-ups and those of you moms in my position can totally sympathize...right?  When she says she wants to wear underpants, I put her in underpants and attempt to begin all over again with the "You tell Mama when you have to go potty and you can sit on your potty" and "Remember, you are wearing underpants.  No pee pee in your underpants" and "How are those underpants?  Are they wet or dry?  Still dry!  Hooray!" and,  of course "Do you have to go potty?" every 5 minutes and at 4:23 minutes a puddle appears.

And this is what happened.  As I was helping Tulip put on her shin guards because she had a soccer game and I was taking only her because Wolfie and Luna were staying home with Papa and when Tulip and I were to get home we would all have a quick lunch and then get ready to go to the family party (aforementioned Zellerbration) and then we would go and arrive on time looking like a sharp, put-together stylish family and it would all happen just like I dreamed...Luna peed.  Which is a funny looking word when you type it.  It's not so funny when it's one of those waterfall pee pee in your pants moments.  I mean, the underpants absorbed nothing.  She was standing on the step stool in the bathroom pretending to brush her teeth and a torrential amount of pee gushed down and it really was like a waterfall because we could all hear it cascading down the step stool onto the tile.

"I make pee pee!"

I've got a shin guard tucked under my armpit and I'm heading into the girls' room to get a pull-up and a cloth diaper to clean up the puddle.  Gabe to the rescue.  I toss him the cloth diaper, air kisses, thank you's, I love you's, have a good soccer game, and off we go.

After lunch, I go to get my black pants out of the laundry basket to "fluff" dry and see some objects in the basket that were not there this morning.  I see a dish towel, a wash cloth, and a cloth diaper.  A soaking wet cloth diaper which had been touching my black cotton pants.

In addition to being insta-wrinkle cotton, these pants are also mega-absorb pants.  My pants have a wet pee stain the size of a pot roast serving platter.

This is my life...and perhaps a little bit like yours too, huh.

The Soundtrack of My Life

It starts with a conversation I have with myself, in my head, that goes something like, "Hey June, now would be a good time to take that second dose of eye drops."  I've had a nasty eye infection all week and I'm taking antibiotic eye drops three times a day.

So, of course, because I need a moment to myself, a moment I prefer to be uninterrupted, I notice Luna putting stickers on the wood floor while I'm en route to the bathroom.  I decide to deal with the sticker situation "real quick" and don't notice Tulip run into the bathroom.  I set Luna up at the table with paper because, "Stickers are for paper."

"Mama, I'm ready for you to wipe my butt....."

Gabe is cooking dinner.  He has two hard and fast rules while he's cooking dinner.  1) No one plays near the stove, and 2) He will not wipe a butt (unless he is the only home who can wipe a butt).

I take care of Tulip and proceed to wash my hands for longer than necessary because, darn it, I'm about to put in some eye drops.  But there is screaming.  Distress.  I mean, what is going on?  Did Luna pinch her finger in the piano lid?

Luna has a sticker on her finger and she can't get it off.  It gets stuck to her other finger.  And back and forth.  I successfully remove the sticker and place it on the paper I gave her.  I turn because, don't you know, I'm about to go put in those eye drops and Luna squeals, "No, Mama.  Don't go!"  She is so distraught over the stickers; she can't get them off the backing, she doesn't like that orange piece of construction paper I gave her.

I quickly make a grid out of post it notes.  It's genius, really.  Stick individual post it notes on the table.  Stick stickers on the post it notes.  Re-stick the post it notes on the construction paper or just on other surfaces.  Stickers on stickers that can stick and stick again.  Luna is completely satisfied.

I am putting in eye drops.  I hear Wolfie and Tulip playing some game in his room where they take turns spinning on a chair.

"After you, My Damn."

"After you, My Handsome."

I giggle with my eyes and squeeze out the eye drops.  Ineffective.  I put in two more drops.

Luna announces, "Hey guys.  Here I am!'

I've Done This

I've left for work in the morning, only to have already secretly called in sick, checked into a hotel room for the day just so I could take an uninterrupted nap.

Okay...so I've never actually done this.  But I have fantasized about it.

Join me folks - what is one of your parenting fantasies?

The Negotiator

Having grown up an only child, my children's behaviors towards their siblings are sometimes foreign to me.  They make me think, "Oh, so that's how brothers and sisters do things..."

For example, I never ever had to negotiate.  I also never had to tattle or get tattled on.  Any directing I did was aimed towards my dolls so my make-believe always went the way I wanted it.

Tulip and Luna were playing and sooner or later Tulip hollered, "Mama, Luna won't blabbety blab."  I'm not diminishing Tulip's concern, but it wasn't really a thing.  I've learned to say, "You two will have to work it out."  As a mom with limited personal experience in sibling disagreements, I am apt to jump right in with an incredibly appropriate, gentle, forward-thinking though creative parental tactic.  But one day it hit me...I don't have to do it all.  They are going to be siblings a lot longer than I am going to be their mother.

I overheard Tulip say, "Luna, don't you want to go see Papa?"  How clever.  Send the baby away.  Humph.

Tulip is funny.  She has this tactic where she tells the other person what to say while they're playing.  For example, she might be creating something in the pretend kitchen and she'll say to Wolfie, "Wolfie, I want you to say 'I wish I had some Parmesan toast.'"  Wolfie will say just that and she'll swoop in as the waitress-chef with a fresh batch of Parmesan toast.  She'll follow up with, "Wolfie, I want you to say 'Do you have any tomatoes?'"  while she holds some wooden tomatoes behind her back.

Later today I heard her say, "Wolfie, I want you to say 'Tulip, don't you want to be the first to be served dessert?'"  Oh she is a clever one.