Sunday, June 01, 2008

Twas a bad day to be a couch

By posting this I know I set the Newman reproduction clock back by at least six months, but I cannot keep this to myself!

Yesterday was a particularly exhausting day for us. By us, I mean me, because NOTHING exhausts children!

The kids were especially rowdy and when they weren't out in the backyard fighting each other over stupid $2 sandbox toys enjoying each other's company and the lovely day, they were inside the house playing a game Elizabeth calls (appropriately) Run Around In Circles.
This game is great.
They run literally in a circle through my bedroom into the bathroom, then into the laundry room, through the kitchen, the living room and back into my bedroom. Over and over and over. Everytime they pass by me they yell "Hi Mommy!" and keep going. Sometimes Dylan runs over and will hug my leg in the middle of a lap.
I'm not sure what the goal of the game is, but it does burn off some of their ridiculous nuclear fueled energy, so I love it.

While they ran around in circles and Ben napped I worked out for about a half hour. It took me an hour to get in the half hour, but that's ok. I had to pause for diaper changes and laundry and other fun mommy stuff.
Today, incidentally, I'm going to fit in an hour of working out. Two days ago I did 45 minutes, so it will all even out in the end. Hopefully while it evens out MY end.

Har dee har.

Anyway, that was at about 10:30 in the morning.
Bob had taken a load of garbage and junk from the yard to the dump, which always takes FOREVER even though it's about 15 minutes away, go figure. I think he sneaks off the road into the cedar brush to shoot cottontails on the way home, but he'll never confess.

I made hot dogs for lunch but they burned, so I gave the kids the two good ones and ate egg salad instead. I had to use the heel of the bread! Horrible.
Then the kids stole one of my pickles. Thieves! It's just as well, I probably didn't need the sodium anyway.

After Bob got home, we sort of just all kicked it around the house a bit. Dylan is fostering a MAJOR new obsession with the live-action Alvin and the Chipmunks movie. It's a borderline serious problem at this point.
That movie is on constant repeat in his room. He'll come out and say "I want Chick-munks!" over and over until you go restart the movie for him.
I hate to say this, but I miss SpongeBob.
So, Dylan went to watch Chick-munks and Bob, bless his heart, came into the living room and told Elizabeth:
"Dylan is watching Chipmunks right now if you want to go watch it with him."

To which I said, "Yeah hurry, there's only going to be 10 more showings today!"
And we all laughed....

The baby started getting a smidge fussy during the afternoon and was wanting to nurse every HOUR. EVERY HOUR! Dude.
He'd fall asleep for 15 or 20 minutes afterward, then wake up howling. It was truly exhausting even though I was mostly just sitting there strapping a kid to my lady lumps.
I had already planned a dinner of spaghetti and sausage and in a brief moment of baby peace I went and got that started.
While I was putting away dishes, Dylan started yelling "It's poo! It's poo!!!"
Never a good sign.

I went into the living room and sure enough, there was a little poo on the couch. I said "Ok Dylan, it's poo. Get off the couch and don't touch!"
I wasn't sure WHERE the poo came from, and I didn't really care at this point. I got a paper towel from the kitchen and turned back to find that Dylan had SLID off of the couch leaving a lovely POO trail all over the couch cushion.
A ha! That's where the poo came from. He had pooed his underpants.
I didn't cry.
I called in reinforcements, aka Bob, and he took the rogue pooer into the bathroom and cleaned him up (via shower sprayer) while I unzipped the couch cushions and threw them into the washing machine. We were both gagging. Poo is sick.

Poo crisis handled, I returned to dishes and dinner (I washed my hands don't worry!) I had dinner all cooking when we realized that our phone had no dial tone. Again.
So WHILE I nursed the cranky-again baby I called the cable company to find out what was wrong with the dang phone. Long story short, we had to power cycle our phone modem, again.
What a pain.

During that phone call, the timer for dinner went off. After I hung up on the phone guy I told Bob that dinner was ready. I was still stuck on the couch nursing.
Bob made himself up a big plate of food and came back to sit down on the couch.
He set the plate on the arm of the couch.
I said:
"You didn't get the kids anything to eat?"
He said:
"Ah, screw those kids!"
And as he was getting up to fix them some bowls of noodles, he accidentally tipped the plate off the arm of the couch and ALL OVER HIMSELF.
HOT SPAGHETTI SAUCE! Molten hot lava!

There were some bad bad words said and he went into the bathroom saying them, leaving a pile of noodles and sauce all over the couch cushion.
Ugh.
About a minute later he came back out and we cleaned up the noodle mess together. Ugh, what a mess. I unzipped ANOTHER couch cushion and threw it into the washer.
Luckily, there was enough food for everyone to eat, even after the incident.

The rest of the evening went mostly without further insanity.
The kids and Bob went out to water the garden and enjoy the sunset turning the clouds pink. Then they sat in Bob's truck listening to the kid songs on Sirius radio. Eventually, the baby gave up on Boobie Quest 2008 and fell asleep in his bassinet. Bob put the kids to bed and we went to sleep not too long after that, exhausted and lightly scented with tomato sauce.

4 comments:

Maribeth said...

Lady lumps...I laughed so hard when I read that. Aren't they crazy when they go on a 'MUST HAVE BOOB FEAST'. Evan did his during the middle of the night. Right when I was ready to go to bed...it was awful. Lasted till 5 am!
The poo...that's gross. I now know why people wrapped their couches in plastic!

eaf said...

See, this is the post those of us who are still reproductively inclined need to see. I see those cute pictures of little Ben and think, "If Jessey can do it, so can I! What difference would a third kid make anyway?" Then I see this and say, "Oh. Yeah."

If Athena doesn't figure out the potty thing soon, I am going to ship her to Timbuktu. Poo is gross. And all my life seems to be about lately is poo. I'm done. DONE!

Anonymous said...

Ahh, see this doesn't bother me. Poo on the couch? Happens with the dog. Luckily for me, I have that little non-working nose issue going for me. If there's a dark stain on the couch, I either ignore it, or argue that it's dirt. Then David sticks his nose near it to confirm it's poo. Then I say, "Well you have to clean it, I won't be able to tell if the smell is gone." And believe it or not, in the 7 years we've lived together, he's never once argued with me on that. I do not see lots of diaper duty in my future.

Jessica said...

We were lucky that Elizabeth got herself potty trained, with little pressure from us, reasonably quickly.
Dylan is making us insane.
He pees/poos his diapers, doesn't care.
He pees/poos his underpants, doesn't care.
He pees/poos during nekkid time, doesn't care.
He pees in the bathtub, the pool, on the deck, on the kitchen floor, on his carpet (which now has to be ripped out), pretty much wherever he wants to pee.
Except in the potty. He cannot bear to pee and/or poo in the appropriate receptacle.
It's really making me crazy.

I am glad that I didn't take a picture of the poo smear, because that really doesn't need to be preserved for all eternity. But I really SHOULD HAVE taken a picture, for journalistic integrity and all that crap.
It was heinous.

I'm not usually affected by poop, but my goodness...this was megapoop.