All in a Day

Here is a list of things that happened in our family today:

Jack screamed the entire car ride to church. Not because it was only 0 degrees and he was freezing cold, but because his “buttons” (aka mittens) had come off and he couldn’t get them back on.

It was 0 degrees today, and yes, we took the kids out.

While I was getting ready for church (Eric had to go early) Jack climbed up onto the piano bench and ripped up some music that I needed for an accompanying job in February. After tending to that issue, I returned to fine Ellie pulling things from the trash and sticking them in her mouth.

Much to Jack’s great delight, Papa bought him a treat from the Youth Group bake sale at church today. Yum. (The truth of the matter is that Mommy and Daddy had no money and Mommy had to go ask HER Daddy for a little change. I guess some things never change.)

I hit a great sale at Old Navy this afternoon and clothed our kids for life. Well, not really. But it sure felt like it.

During his “nap” today, Jack managed to dump out both his and Ellie’s baskets of diapers, as well as a few bags of diapers from the recently-purchased (thanks Dad!) jumbo box of diapers from Costco. Eric went in to find the floor COVERED in a lovely mix of size 4, 5, and 6 Huggies. Guess what? They’re still sitting there.

While Eric was trying to start cleaning up the diapers Jack opened the door to our room, where Ellie had been napping, and woke her up. (Hence the phone call to me at Old Navy, “When will you be home?”)

Jack threw—yes, threw—his bowl of rice over and behind his head at dinner when he was “all done,” except that he wasn’t all done, and so the carpet got a nice splattering of rice. And if you know anything about cleaning up rice from the floor you know that you can’t sweep it up right away because it gets all stuck in the brush of the broom. You have to wait until it dries and is crispy and easy to sweep up. But this was on carpet, so I couldn’t exactly sweep, and unfortunately my vacuum was without a bag, so the discarded rice had to wait longer than the preferred “crisping” time. It’s okay; it sprayed nicely over the exact same spot where Jack peed—through his big boy underwear, right after sitting on the potty—yesterday. Time to get out the old wet vac…after all, it has been two weeks since we used it last.

Eric and I ate guacamole, hot spinach artichoke dip, and chips for dinner. Go Packers.

Ellie choked on a chip and for a good couple minutes we had trouble getting it out…kinda scary.

Before the choking episode, we had attempted to feed Ellie dinner. I say attempted because this is the child who will eat anything you give her; we end up having to cut her off at a certain point because we fear she would just eat and eat and eat. Today, however, she has rejected pretty much everything with a goofy grin and a violent shake of her head. She refused to eat anything we offered her at Boston Market at lunchtime. Tonight we gave her rice, peas, and leftover hamburger for dinner. She rejected the rice, flung the peas all over with her hands, smooshing them and squealing gleefully as they went flying in every direction, and the hamburger she would only eat after we took her out of her chair and let her walk around with a handful. (Eric tried to get Jack to eat the hamburger by telling him it was a meat cookie, as it was round, but Jack didn’t fall for it. He did, however, continue to call it “cookie” whenever he saw Ellie walk by eating her bites.)

Ellie peed on the couch this evening. Eric took off her diaper and she twisted away from him and was able to stand up, run back and forth on the couch a few times, and then suddenly she stopped and we heard the tell-tale splashing sound. The worst—and funniest—part was that the instant that Eric whisked her away, Jack came barreling down the hallway and face-planted into the couch—right into the pee puddle! He actually got it on his face! He wiped his forehead with his hand going, “Yucky.” I couldn’t stop laughing.

While Jack was watching his Thomas the Tank Engine DVD on our computer tonight, Ellie figured out how to climb ONTO the computer desk. We came in to find her sitting up here, unplugging multiple ports and smashing the new microphone into the keyboard. No matter how many times we told her “no” it was all she wanted to do, all night. You would have thought it was the end of the world by the way she cried when we shut her out of the bedroom.

And this one was actually a couple nights ago, but have to mention it: we woke up to Jack crying, “Daddy! Help (which sounds like “hup”)!” As we stumbled into the darkened room I heard Eric say to me, “Did you put pajamas on him?” I’m thinking, “Of course I put pajamas on him. It’s freezing outside—why would I not put pajamas on him? I’m a good mom!” But sure enough, there he was, lying in bed, wearing nothing but a diaper. For the life of us we could not find his pj’s anywhere. I had to go dig in my dirty laundry pile to get him something to wear because we didn’t have any more clean pairs of kids pajamas. The next morning our mystery was solved: he had apparently removed his pj’s and, in the dark, put them back in his dresser drawer. Strange, I tell you.

Some days, well, some days are just full. But when they end with sweet, soft kisses on the cheek and “Covers, Mommy!” and “Eye-you, Mommy!” (I love you)…well, it makes getting up to do it again tomorrow worth all the trouble that was packed into today. Enjoy your day off tomorrow, wherever you are.