I am as loathe to complain about things as the next girl, but I do like a nice chronicle of horrors. To start this blog off right, I will describe to you how my daughters and I started last Wednesday, June 6, 2012.
AB got into my bed with her blankie around 4:00 a.m. and went back to sleep. So did I.
EB got in my bed around 5:00 a.m. carrying her blankie, sippy cup full of spoiled milk, kitty cat, and Fairy Magic book, and wearing shoes. She did not go back to sleep. Neither did I. Neither did AB.
As soon as EB got in on the other side of me and we settled in with the blankets pulled up to our necks, she demanded that I get her more milk. I groaned and complied, having to un-blanket everyone, get my legs out, and re-blanket my bedmates before scooting down to the foot of my bed to get out.
After I served the sleepy princess, I started working on a translation. The girls got up soon and started playing with/fighting over some wrapping paper by my desk. They used two full rolls. They unrolled them completely then played with/fought over the cardboard rolls (pirate telescopes) inside.
They found one Sharpie on the desk and fought until I gave them three more. Then they drew some nice stuff on the white side of the wrapping paper.
They wanted to play with my sewing machines. They found scraps of fabric in the trash and tried to put them into the machine under the needle. I saw this and said, “NO! GOD---!" AB repeated and embellished what she knew I meant, "GODDAMMIT!" The first cursing anecdote. Awesome. I used to think that I was the only small child to have cursed and then told my parent that I learned the word from him or her. I thought that until last year, when children born in 2009 started talking, then I learned that every single child does this. And every single parent then tells his or her friends.
Since they were intent on sewing, I helped them make two little fabric bags. Their job was to push on the the pedal until I yelled, “STOP STOP STOP!” Then they would eventually say, “Okay, Mommy,” and stop, after I had either run off the fabric several inches ago or pushed the reverse button and sewn the whole seam again backwards. They played with their little bags for a couple minutes before putting them in the shoe bin.
Meanwhile, I kept going back to my computer to do my translation work. The girls wanted to "work" on my computer too. I let them use the laptop but tried to keep them in a Word document. They always manage to open lots of windows, though. I just try to prevent them from changing settlings like disabling the keyboard or something. The other laptop, which they do have access to, still works 100% except for the keys 5 and 6, one of which we need for the wireless internet password. But I’m not saying which because it’s a secret password.
EB and I had cereal. She spilled all of the milk out of her bowl onto a blanket on the couch. Then she asked me for some more milk. I said, “Are you kidding me!?” but she wasn’t. AB was content to eat her cereal dry, because it makes it more like eating a snack, and she loves snacks so much more than meals.
I worked on “thank you” artwork that we would be bringing to the preschool teachers for the last day of school. I printed pictures of the girls painting the night before. Their paintings had started out as black circles on white paper. They “worked” them until they were completely black pieces of paper. Of course that saturated them with wet paint, so when they dried in the morning I taped up the back where they had torn when I had tried to peel them off the table. I wrote this little history/explanation by the photos and then taped it to the back of the black paintings.
I used the froggy tape to attach the photos to the painting. Froggy tape is Scotch tape that comes out of my frog-shaped tape dispenser. The girls started crying to use the froggy tape themselves. Despite their pleas of "to share! to share!" (that’s an adjective describing the froggy tape) I insisted that froggy tape is for Mommy only. It is very delicate and it belongs to Mommy. EB then immediately informed me that, as I had just told her, they had a lot of colorful tape that isn’t delicate; it’s “poh-fect.” Froggy tape, she said, was too delicate. God, she’s so wise.
I also used froggy tape to tape envelopes of cut-up paper bits onto the back of the teachers' paintings. I didn’t think any other kids would be giving special cut-up paper collections to the teachers. The girls got excited about this prospect and started cutting up more paper to add. Obviously they could not find their scissors themselves because there are only 8 pairs spread in the open between the combined dining room and living room. I found them and they got to work.
As AB kept cutting, EB decided to recreate a scene in the “Caillou Holiday Movie” video where the toddler little sister wraps up a handful of catfood in wrapping paper to give as a Christmas present. EB got her catfood wrapped up in a huge ball made of of about 5 feet of crumped paper. At her request I got a long ribbon out and tied it around the abomination as a bow. She trotted off to the living room dribbling the food out from the im-“poh-fect” seams of the wrapping. Mrs. Serendipity was later gracious enough to eat up little Gretel's trail, piece by well-sniffed piece.
The girls turned to their colored masking tape. They wound the tape around the frame of the daybed (“couch”) in the living room, and pulled the rolls from there all through the apartment. Then they'd jump over the stretched out strips a foot off the ground. They accidentally got tape stuck to the two unrolled rolls of wrapping paper, leading to a LOT of stuff to step on.
The translation was going slowly so I finally had the wisdom to turn on the TV. We have a Dora video set to play in an infinite loop. That was soothing for all of us.
Granddaddy Steve was going to pick up the girls from school that day so I printed out a picture of him and wrote who he was (not a pirate) for the girls to take to school and look at so they weren’t surprised at 1:15, like they had been the last time we did this. They had screamed in terror like they had never seen him in their lives. The school had to call me to confirm that he was allowed to pick them up.
The first set of instructions read as follows:
NOTICE REGARDING SWARTHY PICKER-UPPER OF AB & EB, REGARDLESS OF WHAT THEY SAY
Cap’n Granddaddy SC
[Here a drawing of a whale and sail boat on either side of a photo of SC, onto which I drew a glittering gold hoop earring]
This man is GRANDDADDY, not Captain Ahab, the Old Man & the Sea, a pirate, or any other sinister character, nautical or terrestrian. And if AB and EB act horrified to see him when he picks them up on Wednesday, you can remind them that he has lots of ice cream to give them at home. Arg!
Many thanks from Mommy KB, 6/6/12
I decided that the preschool teachers didn’t have enough time on their hands to sort through my humor, so I made a second draft that read as follows:
Granddaddy SC will be picking up AB and EB on Wednesday, June 6. He is not a pirate. He is a nice grandfather AND he has ice cream at home!
[I included the same picture of SC, but this time what I drew on it was an ice cream cone in his hand].
I made a list of instructions for Granddaddy and packed a bag for after school. Blankies, favorite toys, naptime diapers, and melatonin for him to really make a nap happen.
I put together a package for the preschool room mother with paper plates and the two sets of the enhanced paintings for the teachers. This was for Friday’s last-day-of-school party… where incidentally two other people had also brought paper plates and no one brought napkins, and no one gave my paper plates back to me. I never even saw my paper plates.
I packed the girls' lunches for school. AB helped by making her own PB&J sandwich. Since I was speaking to her in Spanish I was calling the peanut butter by its Spanish name: "mantequilla de cacahuates." She said, "I don't like mantequilla de cacahuates. They're really yucky a little bit. I like peanut butter." Got it.
Then I made my own lunch. PB&J of course. It’s super good.
I finished making lunches and packing extra clothes in the packpacks, and getting the jackets together in case it rained.
I took a shower. It was only about 7:30 so I figured I had time. In the middle AB came in and said she urgently needed more raisins. I told her where they were on the counter. She went and looked and didn’t find them. So I got out of the shower and ran, dripping, to the kitchen to get raisins. I handed them out and ran back to the shower, thinking how I was the awesomest mother on earth, and which social media site could I post that fact on, using the word ”dripping.” (It turns out to be this one).
I don’t think I'd mentioned that I worked till 12:00 the night before and had gotten up at least once around 2 to comfort AB for a bad dream. Let’s just throw that in here.
The girls decided to make a tent in my room. I got three kitchen chairs and arranged them by the rocking chair and the bed, and put my bedspread over them. From the moment I’d started getting the chairs they kept telling me that we had to put the blanket on them. I got the flashlights too, at a similarly insistent request, and put pillows inside the tent on the floor. EB got a Spanish baby book of about dinosaurs and AB got one of my novels. They sat inside reading their books with the flashlights and laughing. What perfect children.
I fed Sarah, the cat whose food had been raided earlier, and who had waited LONG ENOUGH.
When we could not stay inside any longer, we went to school. We were so early that we had to play on the playground while we waited for the classroom to open.
After I took them to class and put their different things in the right places I went to SC’s house to leave my car, the afterschool bag, and the instructions, and to put their sippy cups and extra milk in the fridge. I left my car keys on the table. He would need my car because it had the two carseats installed for the girls.
As I got into his car I noticed that it had two kid carseats already in it. Oh, well. I took it to work anyway. It seemed foolish not to go through with my original plan.
When I got to work at 9:45 I was able to finally relax. And remember that I had not put on any deodorant. But there I was. Ready to start the day.
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