Wednesday, April 25, 2012

All in a day



Eventful day!

In the morning, with the beautiful weather, we spent an hour and a half outside. Quint always wants to swing and swing and swing. Uncle Four pushed him for a while and then slowly let him drift down to nothing. I went over and started pushing him big again. After a while, I asked him if he was having fun because he looked nearly asleep or something. Uh-huh. Is your tummy alright? Uh-huh. And then..... he threw up. So I accidentally swang my son to vomit.

But we were outside and it was plenty warm, so we got out the water hose! He had a great time getting hosed off. We got the big stuff off and had a lot of fun squirting water. We striped him on the porch and went inside for lunch. All better.

After nap, we went for a walk. As usual, we stopped at the little creek to feed cheerios to the fish. There's a three foot drop from the shore to the water. I knew that at some point, one of us would fall over. The good news is that, at most, the water is a foot deep and very slow running. Today, the water was even lower than normal. And today, Quint fell in. He was too close to the edge, and the edge crumbled under him. I heard the splat and feared the worst - that his head had hit one of the bigger rocks. Thankfully, I was wrong.  The splat was only his bare legs hitting very thick, very clay like, mud. First thing I saw over the edge was his crying face, dirty, and unhurt. Relief.

Uncle Four jumped down there, extracted him and handed him to me. I sat down and settled him on my lap to try to asses the damage. His little legs were black with mud. He saw the mud and screamed! I had most of a 2 liter of water with me and started cleaning him off. Once the mud was mostly off his skin, he calmed down a lot. There was another family there with us at the moment with a kid Quint's age. He started crying because Quint was crying. I told them that I wouldn't blame them at all if they wanted to go. She made sure he wasn't hurt and they left. We got him cleaned up with a spare receiving blanket (kinda)and calmed down and he only had a teeny, tiny shallow scrape on one knee. A bath at home fixed the rest.

So that's how one boy can get two whole outfits completely filthy in just one short day!

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Cleaning out the garage

How to clean out the garage with two under three:

Pull the car out of the garage so that it's blocking the driveway.
Pull the toys out onto the driveway.
Plant the baby in the grass and hand him a couple of balls to play with.
Roll other balls up the slope of the driveway so they roll back down in an interesting way.
Roll all the chairs out onto the driveway.
Move all the stickerballs out of the baby's reach.
Move all the "end tables" out onto the driveway.
Switch the walk or ride toy to "walk" so the baby can walk around.
Flatten three boxes so we can save the cardboard to catch oil drips from my car in the garage.

Comfort the baby who let the walker get away from him on the transition between grass and agregate.

Go find the toddler who is oddly jerking on the gas meter trying to turn the water on.

Color with sidewalk chalk with both kids.
Throw away some boxes and an old water hose.
Take chalk out of the baby's mouth.
Move a few things around to clear out the space in front of the people door.
Answer the toddler when he asks what each and ever thing in the garage is.
Why is this hose leaking water, Mama?
Convince the toddler that he doesn't need to go in quite yet - here, color on these envelopes that go to nothing.
Rearrange some stuff to make the bottom shelf available for toys.
Take crayons out of the baby's mouth, color for a while, make fake ears with envelopes, take more crayons out of the baby's mouth.
Roll up all the cords from the winter "cigar cellar" to make room for the summer toy fest.
Completely miss that the baby has now crawled inside.
Move the pool, extra boxes, and little stroller to the driveway. Throw out the broken drying rack.
Look up just in time to see the baby crawling back out into the garage and falling down the 4 inch step.
Screaming, crying, cuddling, sitting in the grass with both kids and some toys.
Find a new place to store the power strip and two extension cords which isn't too clever to actually find them again yet.
Smile at the fact that the boys are finally playing together NICELY with some toys.
Unroll the freshly rolled up extension cord and pull out the leaf blower.
Look up just in time to hear "NO THOMAS" for the 85th time AND see the toddler push the sitting baby pretty hard and nearly knock his head on the agregate.

Go punish the toddler and give lecture #45 about how he shouldn't hurt his brother, he should protect his brother, be nice to him, and (again) not hurt him!!!
Decide that now is a great time for everyone to be confined for a bit. Load them up to go pick up the mower at the repair shop.

Start teaching the toddler the name of all the roads and most of the businesses along the way as a tactic to keep him from asking me a question every 15 seconds for the duration of the 6 minute drive. Realize that one day, he will embarrass himself by publicly miss pronouncing biblical Lebanon in the Tennessee way (Leb-nun).
Pick up the mower and head back to the house while continuing the narration of our entire destination. At least the toddler occassionally makes fun of his asking "what's that? what's that? what's that?" Sometimes he will ask it 8 times in a row pointing at everything with a smirky smile on his face.

Arrive back at home with Thomas asleep in his seat. By the time I get over to the toddler's seat, he's gently saying to his brother, "wake up, Thomas" while TRYING TO PRY HIS EYES OPEN!!!
"George! WHAT HAVE I TOLD YOU ABOUT HURTING YOUR BROTHER!!!???"
Very serious eye contact from him, chin tucked, small voice says, "I don't want a spankin'. I won't ever do it again."
I slam his car door, and scream at the trees!
I let him out to run in the yard, roll down the drivers side window and leave the baby in the car. WHERE HE'S SAFE!!
Take the leaf blower and sweep out the garage.
Put some of the toys and good stuff back in the garage in a more organized fashion.
Give up when George starts requesting snacks (it's 12:15), clear the path for the garage door, go in to make lunch, close the garage, move the baby who wakes nearly immediately. Of course.

But after lunch, they actually go to sleep, AT THE SAME TIME. I get the lawn mowed with my super light touch self-propelled mower. Between the two sides of the yard, I READ A NOVEL IN A ROCKING LAWN CHAIR.

And that was really nice...

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

bad dreams

Wow. I just had an amazing conversation with my toddler.

This morning, his baby brother fell off the changing table. In the time it took me to unball two socks and prepare one to put on the baby foot, he completely flipped over and got his legs and butt off the table. This made his head flip over in an arc, while turning him to face the floor. He landed face first IN A FULL BASKET OF LAUNDRY and then kind of slithered out and very minorly bumped his head. It was amazing! And scarey for the baby. Obviously scarey for the toddler too.

George just woke up from a nightmare, hysterical to find some socks. Nathan couldn't figure out why, or rather the gibberish didn't make sense to him since he didn't see the fall. George dreamed that Thomas fell off the changing table and George had to bring him socks to make it better. He was frantically looking through his dresser for socks. I found him some socks, put them on him, and started to talk to him. I told him that Thomas wasn't hurt in the fall. "But he cried and cried!" I tried to explain that he was just scared, and that's why he cried. He said, "Don't (sob) put Thomas (sob) on the table (sob) again." I said, "well, I was thinking about just starting to change both of you on the floor, since Thomas flipped off. Would that be better?" "uh-huh!" "Ok, you wanna to make sure Thomas is OK, right now?" "(sob, sob) uh-huh"

Papa was downstairs with Thomas, unfortunately changing Thomas' clothes ON THE CHANGING TABLE! So we got him off the table and put him on the floor and finished dressing him.

After we got back upstairs, we prayed thanking Jesus for easy falls into piles of laundry and protecting us from scarey dreams. Then he wanted another prayer so we thanked Jesus for green trees, kitty cats, and little brothers.

He seemed so much older as I tucked him into bed again and said goodnight. This was the first bad dream he has had where he could tell us what happened in the dream. And for once, he actually said goodnight too, instead of continuing to ask for something else as I close the door (drink of water, go potty, another blanket, another elmo, or whatever). I was amazed and proud of my little big brother.