Blast From the Past

Stories that would have been blogged, had I been blogging...

Hello again, Monday. (From May 2011)

I'm giving all the doors a fresh coat of paint as one of the final touches before we put the place on the market.  Unfortunately, between painting, humidity/rain, and our over-the-door towel rack thingy in the bathroom, you couldn't close the door without an awful and excessively loud sound that was somewhere between an obnoxious squeak and the sound I imagine a goose to make when it is being brutally murdered-- depending on how many showers have been taken so far.  

This morning I heard Seth moving it back and forth, trying to figure out what exactly was causing the noise (making more noise in the process... yes, the children were still sleeping on the other side of the wall).  I knew what it was, because I was going to fix it yesterday, but then Seth almost caught my soft pretzel dough and plastic mixing bowl on fire, so I didn't actually get to do it (my fault for asking him to turn the oven on without remembering to tell him to take the dough that was rising out of there first).  

A little later this morning, as I was starting to put Lila down for a nap in all her teething wretchedness, Seth called to tell me the door was making noise and it needed to be fixed.  Haaahhhhh. Yes, dear, I know.  It woke me up multiple times this morning, and I was planning on fixing it as soon as I got Lila down for a nap.  

But there was no nap.  The phone ringing perked her up, and then her fight with me to get the phone so she could press buttons put a complete end to the whole nap idea.  Okay, well, the door needs to be fixed, and if she's not going to go to sleep... she and Aidan can play together while I fix it.  Wait, I forgot.  When I "play" with my tools, Aidan needs to play with his, and it becomes serious business, so no sharing with Lila is allowed (which, technically, is not allowed).  That's fine, she'd rather climb all over me and repeatedly pull my pants down while I'm standing on a chair trying to use my super sharp chisels at an awkward angle to get the door to stop making it's honk-of-goose-death sound anyways.  She decided it would also be helpful to serenade us with her "I want to sleep but I don't want to go to sleep and I'm wretched" wretchedness.  Excellent.  I love a little working music.  

A few centimeters of splintered wood, a shaved door frame, and some bent and tweaked metal hooks later, and the door was sounding more like a door should (silent), and less like a tortured fowl.  But now to clean up before someone ingests or impales themselves with said splinters (considering these are my children, either--or both-- are likely).  Time to get out the vacuum! ...which my nearly-three-year-old still runs from, slightly unsure as to whether or not he's allowed to be as terrified of it as I'm pretty sure he wants to be.  Lila's feelings towards it swing from one extreme to the other.  I never know if she's going to try to do some vacuum surfing (it's exactly what it sounds like) or run screaming in sheer terror when I turn it on.   Because today is Monday, she went with the latter.  Normally I'd just pick her up while I vacuum, but because I was crouched down on the floor, kind of stuck behind the door and blockaded by the vacuum, that wasn't the most feasible option.  Not to worry, though, because Lila is half mountain goat...or monkey.  Possibly 1/4 each.  If you wont pick her up, she'll just climb you.  

I hadn't yet given up on wearing my hair down, so she climbed me as soon as I turned the vacuum on and pushed most of my hair into my eyes, and then yanked on the rest of it to help her get to the highest position possible (Dearest Daughter, my name is Rachelle, not Rapunzel, please reconsider your climbing methods).  I swept it out of my face just in time to see the underwear that Aidan had just tossed at me get sucked up by the vacuum hose, leading the vacuum to make a noise akin to some other sort of animal dying, though I managed to turn it off before I could figure out exactly what kind.  

Monday, consider those white toddler underwear I just sucked up to be my white flag of surrender.  I would wave them if they weren't stuck somewhere between the hose and the bag. 

*Looking for the positive, once I finally decided I should open my eyes and start breathing again* ...Awesome, now I get to play with my power drill too.  That always cheers me up.  Thankfully my drill is loud enough that it drowned out most of the "Mommy, why  __________", and "Are you done yet? "questions Aidan had going on a continuous loop that I promise you were making my eyes kind of pop out and go bloodshot with just a tad too much crazy in them in the most cartoonish way imaginable.  Ten screws and a bit of digging later and I was holding my white flag... uh, I mean, Aidan's underwear.  

Now to get it all back together.  I have to admit, the hoses are a little fun to play with.  They're made out of some kind of something that has a really interesting texture, and the way they bend and stretch has left even me tugging on them out of sheer amusement on a quiet housewife day.  Obviously having the hoses unattached was rather exciting for two toddlers, so getting them to let go of the hoses so I could reattach everything was a bit of a challenge.  Thankfully, once I convinced them it was in the best interest of their behinds to go find something else to play with, getting everything into place so the hose would actually suck again, and anything picked up by the floor part of the vacuum would go into the bag and not out the back was only a reasonable amount of trouble... if your idea of "reasonable" is unreasonably generous.  I got it all into place and reached to grab the screws to close it up again.  The screws... I knew I put them right here next to the hoses....... and then it registered what had been making the "tink, tink, plonk" sound when the kids stopped playing with the hoses and moved a few feet away.  

If you ever need to keep little ones occupied, give them a pile of screws and a heater to drop them in.  It works great, I promise.  They wont get into annnnything else, as long as they have screws to drop.  In the heater.  Out of reach.  Requiring me to let go of the hoses and plastic plates that were keeping them riiiiight where they need to be in order to create the necessary seal for a vacuum to actually work.  

Apparently I didn't wave those underwear high enough for Monday to see.   

(Vacuum surfing)

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The short end of the stick. (December 2010)

(This was originally an email to my mom, which included the story I'd emailed to Seth. 
WARNING: Stop reading right now if you have a weak stomach, are easily grossed out, or would rather stay happily oblivious to the reality of parenthood.)

So last night, Seth asked me which one of us was drawing the short end of the stick.  I asked him, "What do you mean, "the short end of the stick"?"  He meant, which one of us was going to brush Aidan's teeth and get him ready for bed (sometimes it can be a challenge, to put it mildly).  I laughed.  Clearly he has NO IDEA, if he thinks that teeth brushing and jammy-ing qualify as "the short end of the stick."  I told him he gets to.  

When this happened today, that phrase immediately popped into my head.  I thought you might get a chuckle out of it, too...

Let me tell you about the short end of the stick, my dear, dear husband.

Aidan came running down the hall to tell me "MAMA! I just got poopoo EVERYWHERE!!" 

"...what do you mean, everywhere?" ( --desperately hoping he's just making things up, or that "everywhere" doesn't actually mean everywhere in 2-year-old-- )  

"I got poopoo EVERYWHERE!!!!"  

I could feel my heart sinking into my stomach, and my stomach rising into my throat.  What, exactly, does "poopoo everywhere" mean to a two year old?  What was I going to find at the end of the hall?  

Poopoo.  Everywhere.  Just like he said.  Apparently it means the same thing to a toddler as it does an adult.  It was the perfect consistency for smearing on everything, and it was all over the seat (both his, and the toilet seat), there was a gob of it on the step stool, some on his knee, some on his hands, some on the toilet paper (still attached to the roll) he'd tried to wipe himself with, and, while I was wiping his knee, I went to steady him by grabbing his other leg... turns out, there was poopoo there, too, which meant there was now poopoo on my hand.  Awesome.  

Lila decided this would be the ideal time to wake up from her nap and start crying and screaming as though something was horribly wrong.  The only thing horribly wrong, was that we weren't in there with her.  She stopped crying as soon as we opened the door.  

Between cleaning up his legs, the stool, the seat, random unchewed cashew pieces that had fallen off/out of the various poop gobs and smears on his body and several other bathroom items, oh right, and my hands, and Lila waking up screaming in the middle of it all, I forgot to wash Aidan's hands.  Five minutes later I was still smelling poopoo, so I gave him another look-over, and immediately realized I'd forgotten to have him wash his streaked hands. Thankfully he'd only eaten a few crackers and chunks of string cheese between leaving the bathroom and my realization of the lack of complete depooping of the toddler.  Ha... thankfully. 

This is why you get to deal with brushing his teeth every night-- because just by going to work every morning, you automatically get the long end of the stick.  

Also, Lila pooped a ribbon today.  Yes, an actual piece of ribbon.  

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*There was nothing Lila wouldn't put in her mouth at that age... including, apparently, ribbon scraps.  And Aidan was to the point where he could use the bathroom unassisted, and when he needed wiping, he would call for me. Except for this particular time, when he decided to try to take care of things himself.

There are so, soooo many moments in parenthood (especially when you have more than one child) where you have two options: laugh or cry.  Or, if you are too in shock to decide in the moment, you can at least give someone else the opportunity to do one or the other by sharing the story with them later.  

You're welcome.