Cheerios Are Taking Over My Life

I deep cleaned the playroom this week. Those of you who know me understand that I'm more likely to get struck by lightning than do this type of cleaning.

The Playroom (On a Normal Day)

It was inspired by cheerios. Cheerios are taking over my life. I find them in the sofa. I find them in the toy bins. I find them in the depths under the table. I even found one behind the books on the bookshelf. In my shoes. On the window sill. You name it, there are cheerios there. It's amazing we don't have gigantic New York City sewer rats thriving on the cheerios Lucy has hidden all over the house.

The kids' reactions to this kind of cleaning was quite amusing.

When I was dusting, Lucy kept running off with my dust rag. Which means that next time I clean I'm going to find a large collection of holey, dusty socks somewhere. Tommy cried.

When I cleaned the windows, Lucy was right there beside me scrubbing....and running off with my paper towels. Tommy cried.

When I scrubbed the fingerprints off the walls, Lucy scrubbed too...and stole sponges. Tommy cried.

Sponge Thief

When I scrubbed the tables, Lucy helped...and ran off with my Lysol wipes. Tommy cried.

When I vacuumed, Lucy wanted a ride. Tommy cried.

So now Lucy has a nice stockpile of cleaning supplies, and will be taking over the household chores. Tommy, clearly, is a slob.

Slave Labor

Apples To Go, Please

Recently Peter and I were walking around Toys 'R' Us making Lucy's birthday list. I was appalled by the amount of McDonald's play food in the kitchen set aisle. There's a fake McDonald's Drive-Thru window, a fake red and yellow cash register, fake supersized soft drinks and fries and triple stacked plastic bacon and cheese covered heart attacks waiting to happen. It's no wonder Americans are fat. We start 'em young.

Peter didn't see why this was upsetting to me. "That stuff was around when we were kids and we're not fat. It's not like we eat fast food often."

Apparently Lucy doesn't see much wrong with it either. At home she picked up her purse, waved "bye-bye" to me, and got on her rocking horse (it's actually a giant blue rocking dog, but that sounds odd typed out). She rocked for a minute, then got to an imaginary drive-thru window. She paused, turned to the side and said, "Um...apples please. Yeah. Apples. Thank you." She used a very decisive "telephone voice" to place her order. She rocked a couple more times, paused again, reached into her purse, and held out MY credit card to the imaginary cashier.

MY CREDIT CARD!!

Last time I saw it, it was in MY wallet in MY purse!! It's identity theft in my own house!

I guess I should be happy that she was buying fruit with it, and not a plastic McDonald's drive-thru window.

I need an apples combo meal, supersized please.

Poopsplosions Revisited

Exersaucers are the solution to infant constipation. If you're ever concerned about the length of time between your baby's bowel movements, plop him in the exersaucer for about five minutes.

Problem solved.

 

Tonight I got revenge for last week's poopsplosion when Peter was conveniently "on duty."

Five minutes after putting Tommy in the exersaucer we heard the ominous squirting noise. I think Tommy deflated. By the time Peter crossed the room to pick him up, there was poop up to Tommy's armpits. Peter had to hose him off.

This is the first time since Lucy was about a month old that Peter has been around for a poopsplosion. I think I'm almost as satisfied as Tommy right now.

How Many Ways Can My Toddler Get Hurt?

I'm having a week where I'm afraid to take Lucy out in public, because someone might report me to CPS for child abuse. The kid has so many bruises it's not even funny.

Lucy is getting more agile and causes me to have heart failure on a daily basis. She can climb ladders now. And in Lucy's mind, everything is a ladder, including furniture. BUT, she can't climb down again nearly as effectively as she climbs up. She has a big girl bed that she can fall out of. She insists on walking up and down stairs like an adult, but she can barely reach the railing. She has no respect for animal teeth and claws, and will frequently tackle strange dogs the same way she tackles our own pets. Of course, none of these things caused any of her injuries.

They were all sustained while WALKING. You'd think that since she's been walking for a year now, that she'd know where her feet (and the walls and doors and floor) are by now. Not so much.

She has a scrape on her nose, from tripping over her own feet on some cobblestones in Williamsburg. She got her first bloody nose from that too. The lovely colonial lady who was helping me mop Lucy up called security on us, in case she needed to go into the ER. Luckily she didn't.

She has a scrape on her right knee from tripping over the door frame on her way outside. Tricky door must have jumped up and grabbed her feet.

She has a bruise on her cheek from unsuccessfully trying to climb up the single step between our entryway and living room. 

She has a bruise on her left knee from running full tilt into a wall. In our house. That wall has been there the whole time we've lived here. It wasn't a new wall, or a tricky wall, or an unexpected pile of junk.

She has bruises on both arms that were sustained from flailing her arms around (aka "dancing") and forgetting where the furniture was.

The house was already childproofed, but this week I'm thinking that we need to invest in helmets and padded walls!

Poor kid!!

Oh No!

No is Lucy's new favorite word.

I've read that shit is the most versatile word in the English language, but I think Lucy would beg to differ. She finds a multitude of uses for the word "No."

First, it obviously can mean "No." As in "NONONONONONONONONO!" when asked to do anything she doesn't want to do. We experience this version of No about 127 times an hour.

But then it can also mean Yes. "Lucy, would you like some juice?" "NO!" But cue a temper tantrum when I put the juice away.

She also uses No to inform us of impending disaster. Whether it's a diaper blowout or a plate of spaghetti about to hit the wall, I know that I need to jump quickly when I hear "Oh! No!"

She uses No to express her disappointment in us. If I try to put a shirt on her that doesn't "match" her pants (take "match" with a grain of salt - she's a toddler after all), I get "Oh no. No, no, no," as she sighs and sadly shakes her head.

When she doesn't know the correct response, No is always a safe fallback. "Lucy, what does the duck say?" "NOOOOoooooo."

And of course, whenever she is hungry, tired, or just plain cranky, I hear lots of short sharp "No!"s. They're frequently accompanied by lots of hand flapping, hitting, kicking, screaming, and a general inability to focus on anything besides the word No.

But I have learned that in the midst of all these No's the best way to get Lucy to comply with my wishes is to make her say Yes, ONCE. "Lucy, I need to change your diaper." "NONONONONONONONO!" "Lucy can you say yes?" "NO!" "Say Yes, Lucy." "Yes." (Said in a very sulky voice). "Great! Yay! Let's change your diaper!" "YEAH!!" Ah, brainwashing. 

A Category 5 Poopsplosion

Tommy got his first shower last night.

He pooped so explosively that it flew out the legs of his diaper and hit the sides of his seat. And then he kicked it.

While I was trying to determine the best approach to cleaning him up, Lucy dumped her pasta over her head.

Lucy got a shower too.

And after carrying two slimy kids upstairs by myself (guess who was working last night), I got a shower too.

Who knew showering was such a family event?!

 It's all good though - I got my revenge:

A Case of the Mondays

Yesterday was one of THOSE days.

The first thing I saw when I left the bedroom was THIS CAT peeing on the floor.

I should have taken the hint and gone back to bed.

Instead I got up and tried to feed, diaper, and dress a two month old and twenty two month old simultaneously. There was a lot of crying. And a lot of exclamations of "Lucy don't touch that!"

Lucy was having a destructive morning. Hurricane Lucy was a category 5. She dumped out all her toys. She cleaned out all my cabinets. She reorganized bookshelves. She found every wire, pen, crayon, sharp object, choke hazard, and rotten sippy cup in the house.

I said "Lucy don't touch that!" a lot. She got put in timeout a lot. There was a lot of crying. The pile of things forbidden objects on the dining room table reached over my head. So finally I decided to take the kids for a drive. Maybe they would sleep. At the very least they would both be confined in carseats and I wouldn't have to chase them or listen to crying. Then I went to get in the car and realized that Peter took Lucy's carseat with him to work. Oops. 

NAPTIME for everyone!!

After the nap, we all were in a better mood.

For about five minutes, and then I fed Lucy her snack. She dumped it all over the floor. Especially her milk. There were no rags to clean it up with because they're all in the laundry. So I grabbed the nearest thing - a washcloth. I cleaned up the mess, then changed Lucy's diaper. A very full, nearly blowout diaper. Unfortunately, Lucy was feeling helpful. So she grabbed the washcloth and used it to wipe. I took it away and put it in the laundry. Then I threw away the dirty diaper. THEN I came back in the room to find Lucy with the poopy washcloth, using it like a washcloth and rubbing it up and down her arms. BATH TIME!!

Yeah you think she's cute. She's not. And where was Tommy during all this? Whining, fussing, and then screaming bloody murder because he wasn't getting the attention he felt he deserved.

 I thought I'd work on the laundry situation. So I went to move the wet laundry into the dryer. The first thing I pulled out was a bra with pink spots all over it. I didn't even want to know what I washed with the load. I just put it all back in the laundry to worry about later. Anyone know how to get pink spots out of bras? If not, I'll call it leopard print.

When Peter got home from work I dumped the kids on him and went for some retail therapy. I bought chocolate to self-medicate. I tried to eat the chocolate and dumped it all on the floor. At that point I sat down on the floor and cried. What a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad MONDAY!