Double Trouble

The boys have figured out that if they work in a tag team fashion they can have twice the destruction with half the beatings.  For example: Jack dumped water on my night stand.  The night stand is full of books that are in queue for next week's reading, and the paperbacks took the worst of it.  After he got in trouble and helped clean the water up, I spread the books out on the floor on towels to air dry.  My mistake was in leaving the room, because Mitch moved in and immediately started making confetti out of them.  See?  Double whammy and only one spanking each.  The bad part is that I used what was left of one of the wet-torn books to smack Mitch's behind once.  I instantly felt guilty and had images of interrogators using phone books on prisoners, and wondered if he would have life long trauma going back the the wet book incident.  The guilt (and worry) didn't last long however, because five minutes later I found he had pushed the stool up to the counter to rub a stick of butter onto a pineapple.  Obviously I hadn't made as much of an impression on him as I had thought, so I tried again (not really, please don't call social services).

As I'm typing this, Mitch is standing next to me in his diaper with his baby laptop, frantically hitting the buttons with his little sticky fingers trying to be like mommy.  He is angelic and adorable and I wonder how he knows exactly how far to push me before I run away screaming.  The rolling around on the bathroom floor in Wal-Mart moment was a close one.  Also, stabbing his brother with a fork over a dinosaur (that we have 3 of), unrolling an entire roll of toilet paper into the toilet, and smearing ketchup on the tv screen are all prime examples of pushing to the limit situations.  Then he throws on the charm long enough for my blood pressure to return to normal, wraps skinny little arms around my neck for a kiss and runs off to start the process again.   He's got great survival instincts, and I count down every night until bedtime so I can breathe again.  I make sure to go in after he's asleep however, to gaze adoringly down on his cherubic form and take that image to bed with me so that I don't wake the next morning still thinking of how much butter we go through at our house.

It's curtains for me

I have a friend who told me I was awesome and something she aspired to, when in the course of texting I told her that I was ironing my curtains.  What she didn't realize was how traumatic the course of events leading up to my having to iron them were.   Here is what happened:  My little cherubs were jumping on the couch, and after I freaked out for the 100th time that week over them hanging onto the curtains for balance (thus bending the rod), they got a spanking each and sent to their room.  Thirty minutes after they were allowed to join life again, they found themselves drawn to the couch against their will.  I know that my angels wouldn't willingly go against my wishes, they were answering the siren like call of the pure bliss of curtain hanging joy.  Well, just when I was to the point of snapping completely, the curtain rod beat me to it.  Off to Wal-Mart we go, since I don't want the neighbors to see my bits parading in jammies after dark.  When we got home I tried to install the new rod, and while I was balanced between the handrail of the treadmill and the back of the couch I realized that the rod was exactly the length of the window, with none to spare.  If I twitched the curtains, the middle fell down and dropped to the floor.  The boys took this as their cue to start dragging the downed curtains all over the house while hitting each other with the jagged pieces of the broken rod (that survival of the fittest saying didn't factor in two and three year olds).  Naturally I needed to wash them before I hung them again, so I threw them in the laundry.  By this time it's dark and I'm in my jammies giving the neighbors a show, so a return trip to Wal-Mart will have to wait until the following day.  Now, I followed the care instructions on the labels to the letter and everything turned out fine, except the black thread.  The black thread in the fabric's design shrunk, so the curtains were puckered and misshapen, a bit like my sanity at this point.  I spent that night pulling them into rectangles again and making plans to spend an entire day starching and ironing to see if they'd be worth saving.  However, the next day was another setback when I found out that the store in town didn't carry a curtain rod that long, and I'd have to wait another day to drive the two and a half hours round trip to get a replacement.  So I ironed like crazy and displayed my wares another night with a headache and a sore jaw from teeth grinding.  Today, I am pleased to announce, we have curtains shaped like curtains and they are hanging on a rod at the window, I am comfortable in my nightwear, and the people that have been camped in our front yard have moved elsewhere.  One more night and I was going to start charging.  So you see, I am not an overachiever or a super organized June Cleaver.   I am just struggling to stay even.  As I typed the last sentence, both boys ran and jumped on the couch and my blood pressure spiked into the danger zone.  When people start wondering why I talk with my teeth clenched and nostrils flared- this is a contributing factor.

To help or not to help

Help/ v. 1. provide (a person, etc.) with the means toward what is needed or sought.  This is the word that Jack keeps using when he's following me around the house while I'm trying to clean.  I don't think he's familiar with this definition however.   What he is doing is closer to the definition of hinderance and Mitch is just plain endangerment.  There I was, balanced on the top rung of the ladder, trying to clean the fans on our 12 foot ceilings.  There Mitch was, lurking just out of sight, waiting until I was cleaning the bulbs to turn on the light.  When I was blinded, he turned on the fan and ran away giggling when I screamed.  Meanwhile, Jack was jumping on the bed and said "careful" in a bored, told-you-so tone of voice.  So I went down the ladder with stars in my eyes to turn everything off and when I turned around Mitch was all the way up the ladder and getting ready to jump onto the bed 3 feet away.  I guess I should be relieved that he's just an opportunist, and it's nothing personal.  He's the guy that completely takes advantage of "wrong place, wrong time", and makes it work for him.  Whenever I try to imagine his future I break out in a cold sweat and get shaky hands.  If he doesn't end up in prison we'll be grateful.

Jack's First Love

Tonight we went to a new restaurant here in town that is run by our old librarian Curtis and his son.  Let me just do a little advertising here first.  Amigos was really a great experience; to have that excellent of service, great food and a CLEAN building is almost unheard of in our neck of the woods.  The bathroom was sparkling, which is a selling point in and of itself.  And just as you may have guessed, the evening's entertainment was provided by our children as usual.  Mitch immediately pushed his hand through the curly cues of metal on the back of his chair, getting stuck like a baby raccoon.  I was thinking of flagging down someone to ask for butter when he finally came free.  Jack had chosen the table that was in direct line of sight to the TV which put us in the bar section of the restaurant, but as soon as he saw our server the TV was entirely forgotten.  He never had a chance once she smiled at him with her braces reflecting the neon glow from the BudLight sign in the window.  Her name was Jennifer and she had a certain flair that was unique, cheerful and incredibly endearing.  Jack started chatting her up almost immediately, laying on the charm just as thick as he could.  I think he even batted his eyelashes at her, giving me gray hair at the same time.  Even after we had ordered and she left to serve other customers, he couldn't take his eyes off her, she was like a siren .  Just as I took a bite of my appetizer, she walked past and he sighed saying in an awed-hushed voice "Wow. You're beautiful."  I did the only rational thing you can do when your four year old son hits on a woman in a bar, I choked on my deep fried dill pickle.  Jordan was so floored by the moment that he just watched me struggle for breath with big round eyes.  When he could speak again he asked Jack to repeat what he had just said, which Jack did- saying "she's beautiful" in a tone that also asked "She's an angel with a platter of hot wings, how do you not see it?".  So Jordan asked him if he wanted to tell her and Jack nodded solemnly while still murmuring "beautiful".  Right then she came to our table, almost as if this moment was meant to be for our blossoming young son, and with his heart on his sleeve and love in his eyes he opened his mouth and stuttered out the first thing that came to him- "Thank you very much. I eat chicken...."  Whew!  That was close.  I almost freaked out for a minute there, but since he has no game what-so-ever I felt like I could possibly relax and enjoy the rest of my meal without having to restrain Casanova.  But then it hit me.  My little boy had just had his first love.  HE'S GROWING UP!  That's when I lost it and started to bawl.  I mean sobbing into my pickle, bawling.  It came out of nowhere with no way to control it, I just had to ride out the storm of emotions in the middle of the dinner rush.  Jordan asked me how I think I'm going to handle it the first time Jack brings a girl home for us to meet.  I told him I had planned on hiding in the bathroom that day, or going to the dentist.  He can tell me all about it afterwards when there are no witnesses to my mini-breakdown.  But just thinking about  it makes my throat close up and my bottom lip quiver.  I'm years away from that particularly brutal experience, but I'm sitting here at my computer wiping my eyes and sniffling into a tissue while I think about my sweet boy being old enough to hold a girl's hand.  I'm not going any farther than that, even in my head, because if I imagine him kissing a girl I'll wind up going to bed early to weep into my pillow.

Moving quickly

Why is it that after four years of motherhood I still have ridiculously naive thoughts like "I'll quickly change the sheets on the bed, and I'll still have time to get to the kitchen to put away the milk before it gets warm."  Why did I think that?  What is it about the last four years that hasn't gotten through to me yet that there is no "quickly" anymore?  When was the last time I was able to move quickly?  When I was by myself at the grocery store last week while Jordan watched the boys, that's when.  You should have seen me, I was a virtual speed demon.  I was organized and moved gracefully and efficiently throughout the store.  I didn't stumble over anyone who had suddenly stopped 6 inches in front of my feet.  Nor did I forget anything on the list because I was distracted by sticky, wet hands grabbing random things off the shelf.  I didn't have to chase anyone down or try to find a time out location in a busy store.  I think I actually heard angels singing, and at the very least  I know I was humming 'The Jefferson's' theme song under my breath.  It took 20 minutes to do an activity that normally takes me over an hour and I left the store grinning from ear to ear.
Pre-Kid Callie could change the sheets in under five minutes.  Today felt like a victory when at the 45 minute mark I emerged from the bedroom with only a sore jaw from clenching my teeth and a headache.   The setbacks were random and many.  I had to pause to console the child I had backed into and sent flying head first into the wall.  Then take one of the pillows away from the other child and put the case back on the pillow.  I turned around to see that the first child had unpacked his dad's hunting backpack and was attempting to wear the minor's head light as a belt. After I repacked the backpack I had to stop to get someone a drink, open a pudding (I used this opportunity to put the milk away- so that's something) turn Optimus back into a truck and change a diaper.  Then someone got his car stuck in the spider web covering the piano as part of the Halloween decorations and pulled everything onto the floor trying to get the car untangled.  Every time I walked into my bedroom I was surprised all over again that the bed still wasn't made.  It didn't make any sense, how did the morning get away from me like that?  Imagine my dismay when I realized that I still had 2 more beds to go...

The Haunting

For those of you who don't know, we live in a hundred year old house.  It's beautiful and charming with original wood trim, two fireplaces, french doors in the kitchen, hardwood floors, picture windows and a ghost.  Not to worry, she is very kind with a great sense of humor.  She adores the boys and plays games with them when they are supposed to be napping.  Some days she's in Jack's room and I can hear him  over the baby monitor say "Boo!"  and then squeal with laughter.  When she's with Mitch you don't need the monitor to hear him laughing.  These are the days that I'm less than happy with having a house guest because if the boys don't get a nap, the rest of my day is just plain chaos.  Any other time we really don't mind having her here.  She is never really scary or even threatening.  Sometimes you catch glimpses from the corner of your eye and your heart will kind of skip a beat, your lungs will stop functioning and you make a garbled sound in the back of your throat that might have been an expletive if you hadn't have been caught off guard.  But when you regain your faculties, you can almost hear her laughing at you.  I like her.   Her name is Tracey and she only has one arm because of a tragic farming accident in her childhood.  I know this, not because we've had seances but because during a baby shower held here for my friend, I met an older woman who told me about the previous resident and how she had visited this house when her friend was still among the living.  She also informed me that Tracey had died here, so we are pretty sure  the person she described is our ghost.  Jordan and I were actually thrilled with this information because having a name for her changed everything.  She is now an honorary member of the family who gets addressed by name on certain occasions.  Apparently Halloween is her favorite time of year because she is out in full force lately.  I guess it's her moment to shine.  We have a doormat that screams when someone steps on it that is her new favorite toy.  It is activated only with pressure on the weight sensor, but at times I've stood in the foyer and looked out the window at an empty porch while the doormat is screaming every 15 to 30 seconds.  A few times the door has even slowly swung open after the doormat goes off.  That's a special kind of spooky, let me tell you.  It's like she's saying "Honey, I'm home!"  I know she's reading over my shoulder right now because the 'activity' during my writing this has escalated.  The doormat has been going nonstop, the broom fell out of the CLOSED pantry cupboard and we had a mini brown out.  I think she's excited that I'm talking about her.  The hard part is trying to figure out if she is flattered excited or upset excited.  I'm wondering if I should even bother posting this....  I'm going to go with the logic that if she wanted to lay low, she would have.  I think she likes the attention.  Am I right Tracey?

Rage

My husband works crazy hours with his job, and as a result he goes to bed most nights around 7 p.m..  He usually turns on some music to drown out the sounds of me wrestling the children into baths, pajamas and bed because if he hears us the guilt kicks in and he feels like he needs to come rescue me.  Since he's grumpy when he's sleep deprived, I try very hard to dissuade him from getting out of bed to assist in the mayhem and I encourage the music.  That being said, I cannot believe some of the music he can fall asleep to!  Nine Inch Nails, Tool, Queens of Stone Age, Mastadon...  this is what he listens to when he wants to fall peacefully into slumber.  And because the boys always seem surprised that they need to wear pajamas to bed (regardless of a lifetime of the same ritual every night), Jordan ends up having to turn the music up rather loud to mask the sounds of our negotiations.  Last night when I entered our bedroom after getting the kids down for the night, I walked into a wall of Rage Against The Machine.  It was so loud and so chaotic that I can only imagine he had passed out in self defense rather than actually falling gently asleep.  Don't get me wrong- I like Rage Against The Machine, but its just not calming enough for me to relax to.  I'm a classical at night kind of person with some exceptions.  Bjork I could fall asleep to, mostly because the lyrics are only five words repeated for three minutes so it's basically hypnotism.  However, RATM makes me want to run five miles and eat raw meat and since I know that Jordan listens to it when he's in a similar frame of mind, I have no clue how it can also be relaxing to him.  I was so curious about it that instead of my usual routine of turning Pandora off before getting into bed, I decided to try his version.  Half an hour later I had a mosh pit of thoughts inside my head, where one wild idea slammed into another and they both went careening through a crowd of similarly crazed and random ideas.  I eventually got up to fold laundry and read something soothing by Jeffery Deaver before I could attempt sleep again.  Should I be worried for him, or impressed?  I'm not sure.