So yesterday was one of those days. You know the kind- the ones where your 14 month old gets his arm stuck in the bathroom trash can before 8am. I will also reveal that said 14 month old has been boycotting a little thing called SLEEP OF ANY KIND after 4am for the last week. Now. I am not a morning person. If I could start my day at 10am I would be a MUCH happier human being. Unfortunately Keaton is not on board with this so even a good day starts at around 6:45- and that’s really good. So here I am in a zombie like state ,brushing my teeth while making the bed and Keaton wobbles into the bathroom to throw objects into the tub to hear the various loud crashes they make. After the 3rd bottle of shampoo and a tube of my mascara didn’t produce a loud enough sound he must have headed over to the shiny metal trash can to see what kind of a sound that would make. However, in the process of trying to pick it up the spring loaded opening trapped his arm and he screamed as if a hungry hyena had gotten a hold of him. So after I have extricated his chubby little arm from the silver jaws of the can’s lid we head down to wake up Rowan.
Rowan has been trained (by me, of course) in the awesome art of ‘laying in your bed until you are hungry enough to face the cold, cruel world’. So she would most likely stay in bed without a peep until 9 or so (which is still not 10, but she is young and will no doubt only improve her art). She is not so keen on mornings either and usually can only be coaxed out of bed if she can wear a dress. If her dresses are dirty or the days’ weather would deem a dress impractical then you might as well give up on words and get a crowbar to pry her out.
“Good morning, my Rowan girl!!!!” I exclaim with all the fake morning cheer I can scrape off of the floor in my brain, as I open the door and walk over to the window.
“I want a dress!!” She announces. The angle and edge already in her voice, poised for an argument.
After the early wake up and the trash can incident I have no fight left in me.
“Sure, dress it is.” Only there are no dresses. They are all dirty. Many curses stream through my head. But a divine inspiration hits and I shout, “Skirt!” I am a genius. “How about a skirt?!” She gives me a look but sees how excited I am about the skirt so she agrees that a skirt would be, although not as good as a dress, acceptable attire for the day. Hallefrickenluia.
We eat our breakfast with minimal screaming and/or throwing of food stuffs, and Rowan asks for her markers to color at the coffee table. I tell her Keaton will be out of his highchair soon so she will have to color at the big table where the markers are safe from his paws. Rowan couldn’t get the caps off of markers until she was 2 1/2- she had poor hand dexterity and strength. We kinda took it for granted that Keaton would have this issue as well. Uh, he does not and lets just say Baby Marker Face taught us that one the hard way. Rowan didn’t want to color at the big table though and I compromised by letting her take her over-sized coloring book and markers into her room where she could shut the door.
10 minutes later she pokes her head out. Rowan: “Mom, I colored on the floor.” Me: What?!” all exasperated and parenty- but I wasn’t too worried because they are washable and I’m sure it was just a small streak due to the marker sliding off the page or something innocent like that. I walked in the room inspecting the floor and didn’t see anything. “Where?” “Right there”, she answers pointing to the giant Ta-doodles book. “I don’t see anything.” She just points and smiles. SMILES. I move the coloring book and there on the white carpet in black marker is a perfect drawing of the planet Saturn, complete with rings and moons. It was really quite a good picture but that only halfway registered before my head exploded. After I put my eyeballs back in and scrubbed the shit out of the carpet I offered up a little prayer to the Crayola gods for their goodness and washableness.
I looked at the clock. 9:20am. This is not good. On days like this I have to give in and let go of any hope I will get anything accomplished other than keeping myself and them alive for another day. I sit on the floor in the living room and play and laugh and just be with them because I don’t want to take anymore chances with limbs or carpet. And from there the day isn’t half bad. They love knowing they have my full attention and recipricate with wet kisses and unbound cuteness. It can’t be like this all the time and not only because our house would resemble a landfill in 3 days’ time. They need the independent times, too. They need to learn to explore and do their own thing, but they make sure to remind me (see:trashcan arm, and carpet planet) that my job is more than just a combo of cleaning lady/negotiator/referee. And I’m pretty thankful for the reminder, although I could have done without the marker on the floor thing.
My super kaduper life 