Mom's the Bomb

Someone asked me this week what I do all day...

Lately, as the weather has gotten colder and somehow our money seems to be evaporating, we have been confined to the house a lot. Every day I get up and make Eli's breakfast with one hand while holding Marina in the other. I have to lob several threats at Eli in response to his daily protests to the menu. I've found that he will eat just about anything if I add raisins to it (not to mention a boost in his regularity).

I have been getting antsy being in the house all day but if we go out, we will encounter one of two things: money spending, or communicable viruses. I have been wanting to take the kids to the Children's Museum lately, but then I think about all the sick kids running around and snotting on everything, so I change my mind and drag them to the grocery store with me. Poor Eli's exciting adventures are limited to the front of a cart. Even when he sits at the table to color and draw, he pretends he's writing grocery lists for me. He will name all the things we thinks we need and make little marks on the paper that he believes are letters.

On the way to Sam's Club today, I heard the sound of the door handle right behind me and realize that Eli has partially opened the back door from his car seat. I immediately started screaming like a lunatic and locked the door so it won't open the rest of the way. He and I then discussed the dangers of opening the door and how he most certainly would fall out of the car and get run over by a truck. It might be time to engage the child safety lock in the door. But what happens if we get trapped under water and need to open the door from the inside? I'll have to give this some thought.

Twice a week Eli goes to preschool. Each day, we have exactly the same scenario. I have to wake him up. He is tired and crabby about being woken up. He tells me he doesn't want to go to school or eat breakfast. He doesn't want anyone else to go to school either and no one can play with toys. It seems that if he is miserable, everyone else should be too. Then he pulls it together a little bit and eats his breakfast. Finally by the time we need to leave, he's totally on board with school. He tells me he is going to be obedient and listen to his teachers this time. Hours later when I pick him up and he tells me about the snacks he ate and the games they played. I ask him if he got in trouble. No, he tells me. Then a few minutes later will come something like this: "Lily (not me but his friend at school) was crying today." Why, I ask him. "Because I hit her in the head with the doctor's box." Hmmm. Or I hear a story from my sister (who works in the school) about witnessing Eli mowing down another kid with a shopping cart. When I asked him about why he did that, he simply told me that the kid was in the way of his cart. In Eli's defense, I have heard reports that his behavior is vastly improved as of late (probably just as long as people stay out of the way of the shopping cart or doctor's box).

So in answer to the question, my days are filled with kids, groceries, laundry, cats, and constant brain storming on effective ways to wrangle a toddler while being a milk machine and trying to find ways to keep an infant happy. So far today, since my kid didn't actually fall out of the car while I was driving and the baby didn't scream the entire time I was in the store, I give myself a C+ for the day.