The Log Ride

Tonight I made one of my favorite dishes growing up, saucy porkchops. Which also happens to be my oldest daughters favorite now too. However, trying to get everyone to sit down and eat the same meal together isn’t realistic. Because why would all of my children want to agree on something to eat? That is crazy talk! I’d have better luck finding my favorite movie in the $5 bin at Walmart.

My youngest is the pickiest eater I have ever met. So we let her eat before us and then sent her upstairs to watch her favorite movie, while we all enjoyed a peaceful dinner with less screaming. Notice I said less. After a nice, quite dinner I volunteered to do the dishes so my husband could play games with the girls. Things were a little too quite upstairs though, so we asked O to run up to check on C before we started the games. Little did I know we were all about to play a super fun game, that was uncomfortably close to Jumanji.

O comes sprinting down the steps faster than a shoplifter with a giant pile of jeans. Her expression is a mix of horror and glee, but mostly horror. I mean come on we all have smiled a bit knowing our sibling was about to get it. And being the one to deliver the news to mom and dad is pretty great.

“Mommy!” she said in a panic. “Mommy, it’s everywhere! The water is on, mommy hurry, help!”.

I dropped my dinner plate and sprinted up the stairs. (I can do that now, thanks Jazzercise) With a scene that looked comparable to G.I. Jane (except I’m not nearly as cool as Demi and it didn’t look anything like G.I Jane), I was jumping over toys and a side stepping around books, kicking Barbies out of the way, until I reached the bathroom doorway and found myself looking at an unbelievable scene.

There she was. Happily sitting in the sink with the spouts on full blast. Kind of looked like the second floor girls lavatory at Hogwarts, except Moaning Myrtle wasn’t doing the flooding this time. It was my soon to be 2 year old.

“C!!” I yelped. I stepped into the bathroom, water completely covering the tops of my feet as I turned off the faucets. I picked up my sopping wet toddler out of the flooded sink and sat her down into our new “baby pool”, that was about a half hour ago, just my bathroom floor. She smiled and said “You Ok?”

“NO! No I’m not okay!” I yelled. “R!!! Help me, get up here.. like now!”

As I’m standing in my brand new aquatics center, regretting my nice quite dinner, I smell it. Ugh it’s poop again. Why is it always poop? I look down at the sink and there are nice little nuggets floating cheerfully in the water. Talk about a log ride. They were cascading down the sides of my sink onto the floor as well. I look at C and she smiles. It’s a damn good thing you are 1 and you are cute. My poor husband gets to the bathroom door and looks exasperated and horrified. I’m so angry, I can’t even process what’s happening. 1. She could’ve gotten seriously hurt and 2. My brand new @#$%^&* house!!

I hand him over the baby as he hands me a giant pile of towels. About 14 Frozen and Paw Patrol beach towels later I had successfully mopped up all the water and poop from the floor, sink and in the cabinets. Now to disinfect everything and start another huge ass pile of laundry. I guess I had been meaning to clean my floor boards anyway, so I can check that off my list now.

As I’m finishing up scrubbing the last piece of floor I feel this little hand on my shoulder? It was C. Smiling at me with that ridiculously cute smile, holding a plate with a fake cup cake on it. “You mommy!” I take the cake and the hug that came with it. After she leaves the bathroom I hear yet again another shriek and a crash coming from down stairs. So naturally I closed the door and ignored them.

R comes up later, I couldn’t even ask him what the last scream was about because he looked like he was about to scream as well. C’s little Niagara Falls fiasco had leaked into the ceiling of the garage, directly on the garage door opener, to the top of my car and down and out into the driveway.

Long story short we tucked the girls into bed super early and had a stiff drink or two. I can’t remember. I may have also called my mother and told her I quit. She is coming down now in a month. Halleluiah!

This morning as I was leaving the house trying not to remember the happenings of the previous night, my garage door opener wouldn’t work. SOB!!!! It all came flooding back. (See what I did there). Luckily the app on my phone worked to shut the door. Now if only there was an app to control my kids.

Ice Cream and Deadbolts

Ya’ll this afternoon was hot. Like you better inhale that Bomb Pop now before your face looks like a scary ass clown kind of hot. Luckily O was at camp this afternoon, so I just had M and C to cart around. It’s amazing how being one kid down feels like a mini vaca! Target was kind of a breeze. I could’ve spent an entire day and salary just looking around, but I could tell I was on a very limited time frame with the girls and we still had to go pick up the dog at the groomers. I love it when Georgia, our dog, gets groomed. One she smells way better and two she looks like a very cute shaved Ewok. When we got home from all our errands, the girls were begging to go outside and play in their ridiculously awesome playhouse. Thanks again mom and dad. By this time of day it’s in the shade so I said go ahead. I needed to get some things ready for dinner anyway and it would be nice to do so without toddlers ridding on my legs like a couple of koalas. Although my calf muscle are looking tight lately.

After a few minutes I realized that things were too quite. You know what I mean? Kind of like when all the birds stop chirping when a big storm is near. So naturally I dropped everything and sprinted outside to see what they were doing. Well M decided that the house needed a little face lift or she thought she was the next Van Goh. She colored the entire side of our brown house, including the door, with bright blue chalk. I have to admit for the time she had unsupervised she covered a lot of ground.

“Why did you color the house?” I asked.

“What?” she looked at me with giant innocent eyes and a bright blue hand.

“Chalk stays on the ground only!” I said raising my voice and trying to keep my cool.

I told her to go into the house, which she was not pleased about at all. She started to melt down and asked for her binky, for like the billionth time and of course I said no, yet again. Side note, this is day 2 of no binky. (Prayers and gin are welcomed.) She glared at me with those mischievous beautiful brown eyes and slammed the door. I drug the water hose out and sprayed the blue Smurf massacre off the house. C found all this quite amusing and cheered for me. When I was done I picked her up and smelled a very ripe diaper. Great it’s all over my arm. I go to walk into the house and run into the door, smack! It’s locked….

I knock on the door and loudly call for M, “Unlock the door please!”

So our back door is in a small hallway between our bedroom and the living room. I can see most of each room. She comes strolling casually around the corner of the living room, smiles almost as if she’s surprised to see me and shakes her head no.

“Open. The. Door. Now.” I repeat sternly.

She considers my request and tries to unlock it. After a few failed attempts she successfully unlocks the bottom lock, but to my surprise she had somehow managed to lock the dead bolt above as well. Well Crap. I finally gave up trying to point out and describe the dead bolt to her. Well mostly because she got tired and walked away from me.

So I ran over to the next door neighbors house hoping they still had a key to our house. Not home. Ran across the street to our other neighbors’ house. Not home. Shit. No literally, C had gone again. I was reaching desperation. It was 102 degrees out, I’m barefoot and this diaper can’t hold much more. Third times a charm right? Luckily it was. Our other neighbor was thankfully home and let us in to use her phone. Thank goodness I knew my husband’s phone number. Ah voicemail. Well I expected that I guess. I don’t pick up when I don’t know the number either. Now I was just praying that he listens to the voicemail and doesn’t decided to go run errands after he picks up O.

I thanked my neighbor and ran back over to the house. Out of all my kids I knew M would be the least panicked about being alone. And I was totally right.

I got back into the backyard with C and went up to the door. I looked in and didn’t see or hear M anywhere. So I knocked… and knocked again. Then I see her. She is sitting on the floor with a fist full of ice cream, in front of the door. A half-gallon bucket of mint chocolate chip ice cream is sitting securely between her legs.

“M!” I yelled. “Put that away now!” I like how I thought I had any control in this situation what so ever. I’m cute like that.

“No.” she retorted calmly. Then she got up calmly with the ice cream and walked into my bedroom. Then back into my bathroom, turns and faces me with a chocolaty smile and oh so sticky hands and slams the French doors to the bathroom shut.

I stand there for a moment full of rage and then I start laughing. Well at least I know she is eating the ice cream on the tile now. I embrace the moment. I know M is safe, I mean there is at least half of that container left. That will take her awhile. I strip down C to nothing and wash her off with the hose. She thinks this is all hilarious and wonderful. My kind neighbor stops by with a cold bottle of water and encouragement.

“This is a hard time in motherhood! You’re fine!” she said kindly.

Damn. She is right! So I sit myself down, crack open a nice cold water (in my head it was beer) and sat there spraying my naked baby with a hose until my husband came home.

The Cutest Moocher

Going out to eat with your littles is always an adventure. My husband and I are big foodies. We used to love to go out to eat, try new places and new cuisines. Now going out to eat usually involves my husband whisper shouting empty threats, spilled drinks, the kids hanging over the back of the booth trying to spark conversations with the unfortunate soul trying to eat their meal in peace and me crawling under the table to find the damn binky and picking up the enormous pile of food that our kids have left behind. Half of which I’m pretty sure isn’t all ours, but I don’t want to be “those people” so I clean. After swearing off never going out again, we do and it’s the same madness. However, it gets a little easier as they get older. So there is light at the end of the curry, I mean tunnel. Ohh curry sounds delicious. With school starting tomorrow I told O (4) that we could celebrate by going out to eat. I made the mistake of asking her where she wanted to go, because it’s always one of two place Chick-Fila or McDonald’s. I’ve got to give it to her, they have the best play areas. I’m sorry I mean Old McDonald’s according to O. Today we headed to Chick-Fila to meet up with some good friends for lunch. As I was waiting in line to order, I noticed a homeless man sitting alone at a table trying to sleep. Which is a hard thing to do when there are a million screaming hangry kids running around. Mine included. I was thinking to myself I should get him a meal or maybe a gift card, so he could use it whenever. Then I see my friend laughing, I mean really laughing. So of course I had to lean out of line to see what she is laughing at and I see my middle child M (2) sitting with a random family, eating and talking away like they were life long friends that just so happen to run into each other. I jump out of line, run over and scoop her up. I’m apologizing profusely, as I’m prying a french fry out of her tiny yet extremely strong hand. Then I find myself trying to hand back the freshly chewed fry. Gross. Luckily they were extremely gracious and thought this was hilarious and kept telling me how cute she is. Cute yes, but I apparently need to work with her on social boundaries a little more. I was still mortified and swore to them I do really feed her once in a while. I think they believed me, however they made me keep the fry. Luckily our food showed up shortly after this whole ordeal and M was satisfied. Then I remember the poor homeless man I was going to feed and he was gone. Guess it was a sign that I needed to focus on feeding my own kids so they don’t have to beg for food in restaurants.