All In a Day's Work

There really was nothing unique about last night at our house. It was really just the same theme, different story line, except that I had a moment in the midst of it that I thought despite the stress and irritation of it all, I wanted to freeze frame it into my memory so that I wouldn't forget. So that one day I could remember it well enough to look back on it with fondness, even.

At about 8:00 pm, Dear Daughter states she is hungry and needs a snack before bed. I just walked in the door from work, at little earlier than usual. When Dear Son heard the rumor of snacks, he immediately starts fussing and whining for "bretast!" (breakfast). Then Son announces he wants "pizzas!" as he is on this pizza kick, and would eat it for every meal if allowed. We convinced him that "pizzas" was not on the menu, and I offer him an egg. He says, "Oh yeah! Eggie!" and as I get started with that he begins whining for "tato pattie!" which means he wants one of those convenient frozen potato patties that I don't like to feed the family often, but Son thinks they are the next best thing to "pizzas." We give in to avoid the battle. Dear Son and Dear Daughter finish their full five course snack and we start the bedtime thing.

I have caught "Jon and Kate Plus 8" a time or two, and I'm telling you, I frequently think that if my house looks like chaos, I don't even want to imagine their kind of chaos. It starts with Son finding a rubber glove in one of the bathroom drawers. It is left over from one of my hair coloring kits. He starts to squeal, "Glub! Glub!" and wants help getting it on his hand. The problem is, it's impossible to get each of his chubby little short fingers into its own long finger slot. But that's what he wants. Since it's impossible, Husband only takes so much of it before he does away with the "glub" and begins the task of trying to dress a stubborn, screaming, hot headed not-quite-two-year-old in his monkey-suit of a blanket sleeper. I'm sure this was not an easy task, and after the door to Son's room closed, I heard lots of screaming and crying and banging around in there as Husband dealt with the task. A couple minutes later the door flies open and out trots a grinning little imp stuffed in a blanket sleeper. I don't know how Son managed to stuff Husband in that thing. (Just kidding). Son was happy for the moment, so this was good.

Meanwhile Daughter was taking her token twenty minutes to pee in the toilet, and I was tired of standing around waiting and went to her bedroom to wait comfortably on her bed. Son decided he wanted me to "hold yas!" and so I lifted him into my lap and we began reading stories on his sister's bed. Then Daughter emerges quickly from the bathroom because she HATES HATES HATES to be left alone and requires an audience even when she is doing business with the toilet. She stumbles into her room with her underpants and jeans around her ankles, and I order her to put a Pull Up on. Before she gets to this point, she attempts to take her turtleneck sweater off her head, and it apparently gets stuck somewhere between her neck and her face. She starts freaking out and jumping around and screaming. By now she is buck naked save for the turtle neck sweater flying around her face while she runs in circles screaming that it is going to be stuck like that "FOREVER!" I send her naked butt into her brother's room where Husband had plopped into the rocking chair to wait patiently for the drama to end. I was suddenly slightly more amused than I was irritated about this whole scene. As Daughter's naked buns disappeared around the corner to seek help from her Daddy, I began to giggle and then I considered that may actually come a day in our lives that we would miss these times. I yelled to Husband in the next room, "Do you think there will be a time when they are teenagers that we a will actually miss these days?" And he hollered back, "I guess it depends on how much worse it gets when they are teenagers."