The snow is all melted and it's supposed to break 70 degrees today. Not only am I poking my head out of doors without a coat, but I feel like I'm finally poking my head out of the bathroom for at least a few hours every day. You see, two weeks ago I was felled by a stomach virus that woke me early every morning to bond with the toilet for a few hours. When I could finally emerge, drained and dehydrated, Craig was leaving for work and the kids were peaking in energy. It was a rough week. At the end of it, the girls decided that it was time to potty train.
Yes, last week I potty trained a set of twins. What did you do with your week?
Perhaps it was good that the schedule forced me into blog silence, because those who did hear from me last week didn't find that I had many positive things to say. There's nothing like spending ten minutes in the bathroom bent over a child that insists they need to potty and then giving up and finding another child standing in a puddle in the kitchen. Or taking three toddlers outside to fend off the stir crazies, seeing two run in opposite directions and duck behind trees, and slowly realizing what they have just hid from you to accomplish. Or having to drop trou a few dozen times a day in every room of the house to show the girls when they ask yet again that, indeed, Mommy is wearing her panties and today they have butterflies (or stripes, or flowers, or holes because they're old...). For a two-week-long period, I was in the bathroom about every seven minutes from seven in the morning 'till eight at night. Our floor was littered with more undergarments than a Hollywood portrayal of a frat house. I made a large dinner casserole on Monday and we ate it five nights in a row. I didn't clean anything unless it was going to leave a stain. As soon as the kids were in their beds, I went straight to mine.
And now it's over.
IT'S OVER!
Yesterday I cleaned house for the first time in two weeks, one of those six-hour, mucking-out-the-stall cleanings that are so cathartic in a house with young kids because everything finally gets put back where it goes. The baskets of the foulest laundry imaginable are cleaned and put away.
I feel like cheering! Let's try the one we used to motivate the girls...
2 4 6 8
Who do we appreciate?
Panties! Panties!
WE WEAR PANTIES!
Having all the kids in underwear makes them seem so much closer in age now. They've been playing together much more lately, capping off a two-month period where Devon and the girls were a bit at odds. They wouldn't bathe together, play together, or sometimes even occupy the same room without some major issues. It was frustrating, especially in the evenings when Craig and I would split off and spend time with the kids separately to keep the peace.
"When we wake up, we wear panties!"
1. Get the stamps out of my purse and put them on the day's mail.
2. Carry a basket of laundry up the stairs.
3. Take something out of the freezer and put it on the counter to defrost in hopes that during naptime I can cook it.
4. Clean a toilet.
5. Empty the dishwasher
6. Transfer a load of clothes from washer to dryer
I'm waiting for that magic #8 Make a Phone Call. That old joke about there not being a better time to call back for five more years is totally true. When they're in bed, nobody you need to call is still open. Grrrr... Especially frustrating because a newly moved family has a billion calls that need to be made. The DMV. The power company. Yet another call to our incompetent propane company that insists that we owe them $1200 for a tankful of propane that Maryland law states is gifted to us at the closing of our house.
Ugh. That is not how I parent. I'm the mom who will let the kids play in the snow for ten minutes even if it takes twenty to get the warm clothes out and twenty more to put them away. I was definitely the mom that thought the AAP Guideline of one hour per day of technology for their age group was not strict enough.
Then I had kids. Normal ones. The kind that need supervision and attention all the time. And life goes on when the kids are small. Being jailed for not filing our taxes would seriously hamper my ability to do what I do, care for the kids all day every day. So my ideals have hit reality and adjusted.
All three of them get their million words a year of parental interaction, even though I feel much of it is "Don't touch that!" and "Stop sitting on your sister!" Not sure what that means for their future IQ's.
I finally started to teach them their facts, something I imagined starting well before age 2. Just in time to turn four, Devon can answer that he is three years old. He knows his address, city, phone number, parents' names, full name, and birthday. He's working on counting to twenty by himself but regularly skips fifteen. The girls know their ages, birthdays, and that's about it. Pronunciation is their greatest limitation right now. That's okay.
Carrie: Fuss
Mommy: Do you want to cuddle with your momma? Come here...
Carrie: No! My Mama lives in Tennessee. I want to cuddle with my MOMMY!
Mommy: Sigh....
Melina: Mommy, I need to go peepee.
Mommy: Just a second, sweetie, the baby (Carrie) is on my lap.
Melina: She's not a baby. She's a little girl.
Mommy: Okay, fine. If you need to sleep with Poohbear, run down the stairs, find him quickly, and come right back up. Quickly.
Devon: Mommy. We do NOT run down the stairs. We walk down the stairs. And we hold the railing.
Mommy: Okay, Devon, walk with all due haste down the stairs and get Poohbear.
If they know enough to correct me with such evident delight, they can't suffer from too low intelligence. The professions that require the gift of argument are usually well paid...
Craig learned from listening to NPR that one of the largest predictors of a child's future intelligence and success is the ability to delay gratification. A test that researchers developed is to set a treat in front of a small child and promise to give them TWO treats if they can look at it for five minutes without eating it. Craig, fascinated, tried this on Devon against my better judgement. He set Devon at the table with a blue peanut butter M&M and a digital clock, telling him to wait until he saw the number five to eat the treat. Devon sat there, poking the M&M occasionally but not eating it outright. With one minute to go, he picked it up, gave it a longing lick, and then set it back down. Craig and I watched, entranced. When the buzzer went off, we praised Devon. We reached for the bin to give him a reward and got air. We found Melina around the corner, one skinny arm buried up to the shoulder in the jar and the other fist cramming M&M's into her mouth. She was so stuffed that we were afraid that making her spit them out would cause her to gasp and choke, so we froze and watched the wad in her mouth slowly diminish like a snake digests an ostrich egg. Finally, she flashed us a triumphant smile. "Yum, yum, I get behavior treats!" she crowed.
Melina is the much more maternal one. She walks her baby around by the arms, letting her feet skim the ground. She leaves her in disturbingly lifelike poses around the house: crawling, pulling up on the furniture, getting a diaper change, sleeping with a blanket tucked to her chin and a stuffed puppy beside.
Carrie talks about her baby constantly. I love asking her what her baby's name is to hear the cute way she says "It's Baybee." She holds her baby, sits on my lap, and narrates. Baybee got an owie on her knee. Baybee wanted her mommy because it was bedtime and she got scared and she wanted her mommy. Baybee is crying because she wanted to watch Disney channel but it wasn't time to watch Disney channel. Baybee is cold because she took off her clothes because she wanted to go peepee in the potty.
Mommy had a peaceful three hours shopping alone this morning and picked up this hot little number for the big day. I came in flushed with my success and thoughtlessly announced to Craig that Devon needed to stay out of the garage. Of course you can imagine what happened ten minutes later.
We told Devon that his friend left his bike at our house, and that maybe when Devon got a little bigger he could have a bike like that. Like maybe when he turned four....
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