Messes and Mops

The events of yesterday really made me think that maybe I needed to try my hand at a daily blog, so here I am. I barely even know where to start.

Yesterday my day started between 4 and 5 in the morning when I was having a dream in which I kept hearing my oldest son, CL, close his bedroom door. Slowly I realized that it wasn't a dream and that, not only did I hear him shut his door, but I could hear him walking through the house. I woke JJ up to investigate because I sleep with my arm under the head of our 2 month old daughter, BR, and didn't want to wake her up by moving. JJ sent CL back to bed after catching him stacking an emergency ration bucket on top of a cooler to reach the top of the fridge to get the pizza stone we have in its box (leave it to a 4 year old to determine that he must help himself to figure out what things are).

I decided that since CL was back in his room and under the instruction of going back to sleep, that's what I decided to try to do. Unfortunantly, my paranoia of having a 4 year old roaming the house and getting into God-knows-what, I never really did more than close my eyes. Next thing I know, I hear over the monitor that we have in RC's room CL's voice and the sounds of the room being turned from the normal slight mess that a 1 year old that sleeps in a toddler bed makes before deciding to stay in bed and go to sleep to completely trashed (dresser drawers being thrown around the room included). It's now shortly after 5 am, and I'm more awake that ever. JJ goes across the house to send both boys to bed again and issue some threats of punishment, I'm sure.

At this point in the day, I decided that there was no point going back to sleep because my alarm was going to go off at 6. I still managed to lay still with BR's head still on my arm until the 6 o'clock alarm went off to wake the master bedroom up (JJ, BR, the dog, the cat, and myself). When the alarm went off, all I could think was how happy I was that CL had school.

Fast forward to 5 pm, CL has been brought home from school, JJ has gone to work, RC is up from his nap, BR is down for hers. RC walks up to me smelling all poopy, not good, he's supposed to be working on potty training. So, not feeling like cleaning him with baby wipes, I drew him a bath. CL had an art project he was sent home with from school, so we sat down and did that...forgetting that the water was still running with RC in the tub. Leaving a 1 year old to remember to turn off the water is never a good idea, by the way. No, the tub didn't overflow, I was lucky so far. But then CL wanted to join in on the bath. Knowing he'd whine about it if I said no, I told him he could and decided to go do the 5 dishes that needed washed.

Now, keep in mind that the 2 month old is sleeping and the 4 and 1 year olds are now inthe tub with too much water.

When I was done with the dishes I sat down for about 30 seconds before I started smelling something sweet. I don't have much of a sense of smell due to chronic sinus/nasal inflammation/occasional swelling, so sometimes a general scent is all I can pick up. As I approached the bathroom, I could hear splashing water too. I got to the bathroom to see the floor was wet into the hallway, the bathroom a flowing river from the water being thrown out of the tub by RC, it was all foaming from the whole bottle of bubble bath that CL had climbed to the top shelf to get. Not my best parenting moment, but I told them they had 5 minutes to get out while I tried to mop up the water in th bathroom (the hall is carpeted). All this time I'm running out of time to get BR up from her nap to feed her, thank God she was sleeping well. Unfortunately, my go-to punishment of sending the boys to bed early couldn't happen because they hadn't had supper until after their bedtime because I didn't get it ready until after I'd mopped up the floor and figured out how to get it less slippery.

Needless to say, this mama was more than ready to go to bed last night. Thankless Thursday was just too much for me.

Thank God my husband gave me the car keys thus morning and told me I could do our weekly shopping alone. It was so nice to run errands alone. I'm not sure I have ever had that priviledge ever before in my life. Actually, in general today has been a million times better than yesterday. The biggest hiccup was just CL "not having the time" to clean his room, I got him to do it pretty quickly when I told him that if he didn't have time to clean his room, he didn't have time for us to take him to McDonald's to play with his friend, K. True to form, after playing at Mcdonald's we always get home just in time to put the boys to bed, so it makes the day go much smoother.

Happy Friday folks, keep it simple and I'll have more crazy stay-at-home stories tomorrow.  Peace!