I had one of those nights last night, where I was left with a small shard of sanity. And it is that very shard, that I felt the need to share.
Background. Last few weeks have been nutso. Family stuff, birthdays, Easter, more family stuff, work, oh- and two kids that are conspiring to not sleep through the night. I mean, why should they? They both knock out 2-2.5 hours naps each day, so what’s a little overhead time at say, 3 AM?
Add to that, they are both battling ear infections, last one confirmed yesterday at a noon time Dr’s. appointment. And McGirl is cutting teeth. In short, my kids are snotty, crabby, non-sleeping, drooling little beasts that while I love them more than I can express, I have wanted to turf out to the curb on a fairly regular basis lately.
So queue up the reel from last night’s installment of “The McConville’s” and it would look something like this:
Get home from daycare. 2 year old FREAKING out because he can’t have his “binky” – keeping in mind that he has a binky in his mouth. So, unless he is planning on using it to plug some other orifice (decidedly unadvisable) there is not really a reason for drama. But it was non-stop.
10 month old decides to chime in and throw a screaming fit… because I had the nerve to set. Her. Down. On. The. Family Room. Floor. With. Toys.
There is knock on the door. Its my mother in law grabbing some stuff that she left on Easter Sunday. So both kids crying, I still have my jacket on and oh, the kitchen is still in some assorted state of total chaos from the hosting of said Easter dinner. I mean, like my floors looked like a movie theatre floor after a midnight preview of the newest Twilight movie – gross.
So Grandma gets her stuff and says bye. I am trying to get the kids calmed down for 2 seconds so I can think about getting dinner ready. Finn then moves his hysteria from his ever present need for his binky to an absolute and pressing desire to be “outside, OUTSIDE MAMA!!!!!” And pressing his snotty, drooling face against the sliding glass door.
Finally get a healthy, well-balanced meal on the table – Mac N’ Cheese with some left over Easter ham thrown in for protein (beats the hot dog alternative), a dinner roll and carrots. See, carrots. I told you it was well-balanced. Both kids hork down the food. But not before getting it down shirts, in hair and basically setting the stage for bath night. And let’s not fool ourselves, I don’t have a regular “bath night” routine. I give them a bath when they are gross. Not just sorta gross – that you can fix with a wet wipe, we are talking toddler GROSS.
In an effort to keep things moving at a decent pace and prevent any further meltdowns from either front, it was bath time for both of them. This was both genius and my ultimate downfall. Get both kids in the tub – not before there was a pseudo-breakdown about how many toys are needed in the tub. Manage to get them clean, while somewhat managing to keep them both from drinking the bath water. I mean, soap in the water is one thing, but I think Finn **might** have peed in it. And while most of you would have drained the water and restarted, I couldn’t confirm so we went about our business. Go ahead, call DHS now. But the ratio of possible pee to the total water volume of the tub made it so small, it just wasn’t worth the battle.
And this is when my good idea starts to go wrong… ever try and get a 2 year old and 10 month old dried, diapered and into PJ’s at the same time? Exactly.
Get Finn wrapped in his towel, tell him to go into his room and I will be there in a minute. Take the baby and get her dried off and try to get her dressed. Which shouldn’t be a big deal, except she was playing game of “wriggle-baby” made more difficult by the lotion I had just slathered all over her.
Meanwhile, Mr. Pants-off-Dance-off is running around the upstairs buck-ass naked and shutting all the bedrooms doors, ending with him shutting himself into his room.
Get baby dressed (finally) go and open the door to Finn’s room and discover that he has now peed on his carpet.
This is about when my eye starts twitching uncontrollably.
So, go to get him diapered before something **really** nasty happens, and dressed and realize I have no diapers. Grab the baby so she won’t take a header down the stairs (see, not a totally horrible parent), pull Finn off the changing table and tell him to stay put (still naked). Get downstairs as fast as I can, dig through the Mom bag (challenge in and of itself) to find a diaper, heave my totally overweight self back up the stairs as fast as I can, baby still in crook of the arm, and get back to his room.
He peed on the carpet…. AGAIN. And I know what you are thinking, why oh, why would you leave him naked? That is just silly. Game time decision folks. Sometimes in the spur of the moment, you just don’t have time to really think.
I get him diapered, dressed, trying the whole time to keep the baby from crawling all over said pee spots on the carpet. Drop her in her crib (she starts wailing), tell Finn to keep her company – he walks out of her room and slams the door. And I go find the Resolve to get the floors cleaned up.
After all this, I get the 10 month old down. Get Finn downstairs with plenty of binky’s in tow, as I gave up on the “why on earth do you need more than one binky” argument roughly around the time of the second carpet pee and turn on whatever cartoon is readily available that guarantees’ that he will get that zombie-stoner look and sit in front of the TV for a good 30 minutes without questions. I take one look at my train-wreck of a kitchen (and the supporting movie theatre like floors) and promptly go get a beer before I do one more thing.
In short, last night was a bit of a bitch. But I did survive. I always seem to survive. More importantly, the kids survived. Hell, I even got the kitchen cleaned up. Made Joe bring me dinner as I wasn’t going to do a single thing that would potentially mess up the kitchen given that I had finally gotten it clean. Those floors, well that is another matter for tonight.
Now Listening: My “Passion Pit” radio station on Pandora.
