Asleep at the meal

You've waited several weeks for another post and my apologies to those of you who have checked in day after day, hour after hour, hoping to see an entry (hi mom). Well this will not disappoint. Because today will be a first. Today is a day of many firsts. Today my son got his hair cut and did not cry. Miraculous, I know. Today both of my kids slept until 7:30 am. Pinch me, right? And today, for reasons unknown, my son fell asleep naked at the dinner table eating his quesodilla at 7:00 pm. That sentence alone is bursting with impossibility. First, my son never sleeps naked. I'm not even really sure why he was eating dinner naked. Not only does he not sleep naked, he insists on sleeping with full fleece pajamas (see previous post). Second, he has never fallen asleep at the dinner table. Once he fell asleep in a shopping cart at Costco when he was about two and had a fever, but that's it. Third, he hasn't fallen asleep before 9:00 pm in about a year and a half. These days it's closer to 9:30.

I know what you're thinking. She's lying. How can it be? She's writing fiction. I assure you, it is all true. You can't make this crap up. It's too ridiculous. And in honor of so many firsts, here's another first. A corresponding photo for all to marvel.

And what's even more fantastical, I was able to scoop him up and bring him to his room, put on his underwear and tuck him in without so much as a peep. I'm curious to know what in the world made him so tired. Today we rode our bikes around town but he wasn't even pedaling. He was just sitting on Aba's bike. Then we saw friends and he played with a toy phone the whole time talking to his imaginary friends Vini and Bahn Jahn. We rode home, then walked to a store near by, walked to Starbucks for a little beverage, walked to get his hair cut and then walked home.

But I guess it was enough to wipe him out. He looks so sweet here. Hard to believe this is the kid who inspires so many stories.

Second shift

As I was driving home from work today I was hatching a plan for the afternoon's activities. It's always around 4:00 as I'm getting in my car to pick up my kids that I start to assess the second shift. Is there food in the house? Is it hot out? Should we go to the park before we eat? Should we go to the park after we eat? Should we even bother with park? What about the blow up pool? Should I invite friends over? Should THEY bring dinner? Should I invite friends over to bring dinner and watch my kids while I go to the movies...?

I knew that today would be at least an order of magnitude less chaotic because Maria came this morning and cleaned the house. I just find it to be next to impossible to cook anything when the kitchen is a pit of disaster. So I called my friend and she met us at home with her son. And it was hot today so I decided to move forward with the blow-up pool idea. Dinner was still a question mark but I figured I'd wing something.

It's so hard to balance though because my kids have to eat something right when they get home. They're starving and unless I've prepared meals for the whole week ahead of time, it's likely they'll have to wait. Which is only my own fault so I give them snacks. But if they eat too many snacks then they don't eat dinner. Genius, I know. It only took me like two years to figure that one out with my son.

Meanwhile, back at the pool, the kids are stripped naked, the pool is five inches deep and I am loving it because they're happy and I have time to think about my next move. Then suddenly, without notice, all three kids abort the pool idea and come trampling in the house dripping wet including the baby who's carrying with her three liters of pool water in her swim diaper. So we switch gears. I hustle everyone outside again and bring out the blueberries. Then my kids sit on the porch naked for the next half hour eating blueberries. Meanwhile I've thrown chicken in the over, steamed some broccoli, and brought out the finger paints for the next round of inspired activities.

So we move on to sidewalk painting, also known as"paint your baby sister." And the chicken is still cooking so I break out the cherries and baby girl is now covered in green paint and red cherry dribble, just as happy as she can be, until finally some food is ready so we pile into the house and the kids eat dinner in their underwear.

And I am so tickled to see sun kissed kids eating broccoli in their underwear that I don't even mind the exhaustion. You wouldn't think it would be so hard to orchestrate just a regular drama-free afternoon. But it is. So when it works out, you somehow feel lifted. I mean, at this moment I can think of nothing better than my two babies sitting naked together on the porch eating blueberries. Except that my husband will be managing the second shift tomorrow.

Once

When I was 22 I traveled in Chile for 5 months. I actually lived with a family for part of that time and every day at 4:00 pm we'd have once, as in Spanish for eleven. Except that eleven was actually at 4:00 and that was the time of day when we'd have mashed avocado on bread and coffee. It was awesome. I looked forward to it everyday. Then when I lived in Israel I discovered aruchat arba, which means 4:00 meal. The Israelis are obviously way more literal than the Chileans. I guess it's "tea time" elsewhere in the world. Where is she going with this? My point is that it appears everywhere in the world people need to drink some caffeinated beverage mid-afternoon because they are running on fumes and still have an evening of wrestling kids and making dinner and going to the park and brushing teeth and fighting over bedtime to look forward to. And so, like many parents before me, I am drinking my second cup right now, looking forward to the managed chaos that awaits.

Shit or get off the pot

I was an hour late for work this morning. Why, you ask? Because my son was sitting on the toilet.

My husband usually takes the kids to school and I pick them up but today he wanted to take his parents to the airport so we switched. Big mistake. They're just used to him dropping off and me picking up so when it's reversed, it's like the earth is suddenly spinning in the other direction. All is undone.

It didn't help that my son woke up late since he was up half the night for various reasons. He had to go poo poo. He lost his kitty. The stickers came off his hands. At one point I literally told him to get a grip (in response to the stickers coming off his hands). That actually seemed to work and he went back to his room and fell back asleep.

So he woke up late and my daughter's been a little unwell. It started when we switched her to milk a week before her first birthday (which was Friday!) and she started having a little bit of the runs. It was just half milk half formula, but something was not quite right. And then she spent half the night barfing after her first birthday party, likely having to do with the yellow cake and chocolate frosting cupcake she gobbled. We finally decided to take her off milk for a little while to see if her stomach would settle before we reintroduce. She may also have a stomach bug. Who the hell knows because my mother-in-law was also barfing the day before she left. Maybe it's my cooking? Nah.

And as much as I could I hurried my son along so that I could get to work by 9:00. But he wasn't much interested in breakfast and kept complaining that he had a tummy ache. So I sat him on the toilet and he spent about twenty minutes taking a dump. Indeed he got a lot of it out. So I wiped him, washed hands, flushed and got him into his clothes. My daughter by now is beside herself. She's also teething which doesn't help but she just could not stop crying, even when I was holding her. So my policy is that if they cry even when you're rocking and holding them, then why bother? Put 'em down. So I did and she went back to sleep. My son then asked again to sit on the potty. So he sat for another twenty minutes, this time with no output. I was starting to get annoyed because it was clear that I was going to be late for work. He finally hopped off, I woke up the baby and just as we were all ready to go, he grimaced and told me his belly hurt him and he needed to make a poo poo. So back he went on the potty. By now my daughter is awake and disoriented. She was gnawing on her own hand when, transformed into a rabid dog, she took a big bite out of my shoulder. Easy Dracula! I jumped and yelled NO! which totally startled her so she made the boo boo face and started crying again. And still my son is sitting dangle-footed on the pot. I told him to hurry it up but that made him cry. So I apologized. By the end of his session he'd been sitting on the toilet for 45 minutes. I mean, put me on a toilet for 45 minutes and I'll show you a hemorrhoid the size of a lemon. I have a feeling he had a sour belly and was just nervous about going to school for fear of having to do his business there. I totally get that, except that the toilets at his school are tiny and adorable. For toilets I mean.

We did finally manage to get out of the house and drop off was thankfully uneventful. But by the time I got to work I was exhausted. And depressed for having had to rush my son off the toilet, knowing that he had a belly ache, so that I could get to work. That sucks. Work sucks.

Can you sleep with me a little bit?

So we're back from our big trip and of course I have a million things I want to write about but for a while there I was going to bed at 7:30 because of the jet lag but now I just can't help falling asleep when I put my son to bed. It's RIDICULOUS. Every night we get into bed and I sing him a song and then he says to me, can you sleep with me a little bit? So we close our eyes and, in fact, I end up sleeping with him A LOT. The rest of the friggin night in some cases. Generally I wake up around 2:00 am and move into my own bed. But still, it means that I don't clean up the house, I don't blog, I don't get any mindless time in front of the television, I don't read, sometimes I don't even brush my teeth, and, worst of all, I spend no adult time with my husband.

So this is why there have been no blogs. Thankfully it was not my new year's resolution to blog more because I'd be failing miserably.

But it's 5:30 am and I was awakened by a troll with a weak bladder so I figured as long as I'm up and too irritated to go back to sleep (and since I've been sleeping since 8:30 last night) I might as well write a little.