These Are the Days of Our Lives

Are you having a bad day?  Can you answer Yes to one or more of the following questions?  (These situations may or may not be hypothetical)

Did you go to bed at midnight, only to be awakened by a crying 7 month old, who sleeps 6 inches from your bed, at 3:14, 5:10, and 6:05 am?

Was cat puke the first thing you saw when you came downstairs for breakfast?  And was it in three different places, including on your son's favorite giant letter "L" which had to be thrown away due to the vomitous damage?

Did you venture out to the grocery store with a preschooler and an infant in tow?  Were you in need of many items but had very little room to transport them due to a car seat in the back of your cart?  And was your preschooler struggling with the fact that he has outgrown the front of the cart and to show his dissatisfaction, did he hang off the front of the cart and inadvertently step in front of you at every turn you made, thus adding an hour to your shopping trip?  Did store employees feel sorry for you when you got to the "no limit" self check-out and generously bag your groceries for you and then say to you, "Girl, you must be crazy!"?

Then, did you decide to check the mail after you put your son down for a nap and did you bring your baby with you so she could get a few seconds of vitamin D, but then came back to your newly installed storm door and found it locked?  And you realized that the only two keys for it were inside the house and on your husband's keychain, which were with him at work?  Did you see your cat standing on his hind legs staring at you through the locked door?  Did you consider breaking through the door while you held your infant but reconsidered because of the money you just spent on the door?  Did you then have to knock on two different neighbor's doors looking for a phone to call your husband?  And did your neighbor come to his open window and asked you what you wanted instead of opening the door because his angry little dog wanted to attack you and your baby?  Did you then feel really sorry that your baby cries in the middle of the night just on the other side of his bedroom wall but didn't want to bring it up for fear that he would say no to the phone request?  Was it a miracle when your husband happened to be between classes and picked up a call from a strange number?  Did you sit on your patio furniture on the back porch waiting and got repeatedly harassed by a neighborhood dog that was running free?  When your husband came home to unlock the door, did you find your preschooler at the top of the stairs, not napping and think if you would have known he was there you could have yelled at him to come and open the door for you?

If you can answer yes any of the thousand questions above, you may be having a bad day.  But if you are like me and strangely cheerful today, it may not bog you down.  Maybe it's because I just got to take a shower for the first time in 6 weeks.  Now, if on my way to work later, I hit a dog or get in an accident, I may change my tune.

Hate Mail

If someone swipes your mailbox with their car and you are too lazy and cheap to buy and install a new box, you can expect all of your mail to look like this:

If you can't tell, these three envelopes are super-saturated with moisture.  Somehow it always rains on a day when my bills are delivered.  Then I have to wait for them to dry out before I can pay them.  At least they won't deliver the lottery jackpot I win through the mail... how would I explain the smeared ink to the bank when I try to cash a 115 million dollar check?

Good thing it's almost spring and it never rains in Illinois during the spring.

Genetic Lottery

I've been wondering at what age a person really becomes an adult.  I am married with two kids and most of the time, I don't feel old enough to be here, that is until I hear someone I work with tell me they graduated from high school three years after I graduated from college.  It seems that I don't always act like an adult.

I have also wondered where my kids get their vices.  In my mind they appear out of no where, certainly not passed down from their mother.

But then the undeniable happened today.  I spent the entire day at a conference for moms.  We learned about how to better ourselves and our children in the process.  In the fourth and final workshop of the day, my brain was overload so I was making the occasional comment to my two conference companions (I like to think I was multi-tasking - listening and talking simultaneously).  We were in the back row (where the slackers sit).  Then, a woman walked slowly toward us.  I looked up to make eye contact and noticed that she was stopping.  She bent down in front of us and told us that she had received several complaints about our talking and asked that we be quiet.  Kristen, my co-conspirator, told me that she had never gotten in trouble like that.  I told her that I get in trouble for that stuff all the time...  I'm a bad influence.

Oh the irony of the situation:  here I am at a conference learning about how to get my kids to listen and be good, and I am getting in trouble for talking too much and being disobedient.

Where do our kids learn the things they do?

Reincarnated Toys

When Mark and I were in college, he used to give me the funniest presents.  Most of them were trinkets and figurines found at the local Walgreens.  He must have spent hundreds on fake flowers and plastic farm animals.  I loved finding them on my car or waiting in my room.  I kept them all in boxes and now 10 years later, Eli has found many of them and introduced them into his own toy collection.  Unfortunately some have not fared well under his care.

Mark gifted me with a Legolas doll when the Lord of the Rings movie came out because he was my favorite character.  Legolas stayed in his box with his bow and sword for years.  Then one day Eli opened him...

Observe his current condition.

His face has several chips in it from battling against Orcs and dinosaurs.  His arm has been broken off at the wrist, mostly likely while he was in mid-strike.  His left leg has been detached from the hip (or plastic underwear) but cannot fully fall off because of his blue leggings are tight enough to keep it swinging freely.  Eli uses the swinging leg as a welt-making weapon.

We never imagined all those years ago that those Walgreens toys Mark bought for me would someday be abused by our rambunctious son.  It's like the circle of plastic life.

Marina Beana

Little Marina had her 6 month old appointment today.  Turns out she is still a little peanut.  Her tiny little stats:

Weight:  13 pounds, 0 ounces  -  5th %
Height:  24 inches  -  5th %
Head Circumference:  16 inches  -  7th%

Shower Power

I remember when I was much younger thinking that a shower was a bit of an inconvenience.  Don't get me wrong, I wasn't exactly hygiene deficient, but a shower meant going to bed with wet hair and waking up like a Chia Pet when I was already tired and had no hair taming skills (not that I really have them now).

But now, at this stage in my life, a shower has become a luxury.  A rare moment in my day where I can stand in a place by myself without someone jumping on me or yelling in my face.  The other day, my mom watched my kids for a few minutes while I showered at her house and I thought about standing there for an hour just soaking up hot water and a momentary lack of responsibility.  I was very grateful for the gift from her.

Lately at my house though, my shower time has become a speed-drill.  I can usually only get one in when the kids are napping, but since they rarely nap simultaneously, it usually falls during Eli's nap and Marina gets a steam treatment in her Exersaucer.  Since Eli's room shares a wall with both bathrooms, the challenge has become keeping her quiet long enough for me to get clean, while managing not to cut his nap short.  Unfortunately, this is usually extremely unsuccessful.  Her fuse runs out about the time I rinse the shampoo out of my hair (forget about leg shaving, that is a time trap - sorry Mark).  Last week, I was so desperate for Eli's nap that I had to jump out of the shower with conditioner in my hair, without a towel, to grab her bouncy seat and run her and my naked dripping butt (with water, not with poop) down the hall to my bedroom, just to keep her screams from reaching Eli's ears.  Then it was back to the shower to rinse off and then back out to comfort Screaming Mimi and very soon after a crabby Eli.

Sometimes I think I hit the jackpot and get in the shower while both kids are sleeping, only to hear a small knock on the door a few minutes later and then a little hand grabs the shower curtain and throws it open and tells me that he was just checking on me.  On a positive note, I know that if I were ever to drown in the shower, I wouldn't be there more than 5 minutes before I was discovered.

I know what you are thinking, why even bother taking a shower?  It's a good thing I have a part-time job in the real world or I would be home all day every day in my sweats and rotten body.  Some day I will re-enter the land of respectability and wear make-up, pants without elastic and even wear my hair down more than once every 6 months.  But until then, I will likely still be running up and down the hallway naked trying to keep a baby quiet.

Frizzy Tizzy

Interesting claims.

Then perhaps you would like to use my hair in your next commercial.