Wednesday, July 1, 2009

A day in the life

Before I was a mom, I never would have thought that the every-day would consist of so many random things. Not necessarily bad, just random. Like 10 years ago I probably didn't think 10 years from then I'd be getting in bed and and have to fish kitchen utensils out of the sheets, you know?

Sample day:

Let first baby awake try to feed himself oatmeal for the first time. Change mind for second baby. Clean oatmeal out of hair (mine).

Put in laundry. Happen to notice at least most of the toys that made their way into the laundry basket before it goes into the wash.

Try new white shirts on boys for family photos. Leave on for 10 minutes. During 10 minutes, oldest child lets twins into the bathroom unbeknownst to mom. More enthusiastic splashing than usual produces copious amounts of water on the floor and twin B slips repeatedly cutting his lip and gum (ever so sanitarily) on the toilet seat, managing to bleed all over white shirt intended for family photos.

Go out on a walk. Stroller tire pops. Hobble back to the condo with three children in gimpy stroller.

Child's favorite fire truck M.I.A. Search the house. Search the garbage can full of raw chicken. Find two different cars, a kitchen towel and a new pack of colored pencils. No fire truck. Darn, maybe it was in yesterday's garbage.

Keep searching the house for days. Find another missing bottle in the process! This one is BLACK. Must have been there for months. Bottle goes in garbage. No chance of attemting to clean that one.

Babies room still reeks of sour milk, however. Strip all the sheets and wash for the second time in two days.

Ipod found! Must be some secret spot behind the couch because I'd already looked back there 7 times.

Second rotten bottle found. Thrown in garbage.

(Days later: favorite fire truck found in lobby of condo building! Can't stop talking about return of the fire truck.)

Try to run to the bathroom by myself before anyone catches on. Don't succeed. But once the screaming dies down become amused by my view from inside the bathroom as toes, fingers, cars, toys, cell phones and movies make their way under the door.

Spend an hour trying to move displaced items back to their homes - baby monitors from the toy box back to the kids rooms, movie from between slats in furniture to movie cabinet, cards under the rug back to game closet, spoons shoved in the elliptical back to the drawer, legos in fridge back to toy box, every single shoe from parents closet strewn about the house back to respective closet....

Attempt to do some pilates. Give up after 4 minutes of getting sat on, jumped on and rolled over. Poopy diaper sitting on the face was the last straw.

Babies have serious diaper rash. Let them run around with diapers off for a while. Decide this is a bad idea when siblings find pee on the floor before I do and gleefully play in it.

Refusing to nap three year-old falls asleep on the couch far too close to bed time. (Oh, Curious George has turned to BBC World News. Perhaps that's why.) Babies entertain themselves sticking their fingers in his mouth and pulling his hair while he sleeps.

Stunned to find another toilet time I wasn't aware of. Only evidence was wads of wet toilet paper strewn around bathroom shower, curtains, floor, walls.... Could the 3 year-old have let the babies in and out of the bathroom without me knowing?

Husband finally home from work! Informs wife that he is going to a movie. Wife deflates.

Wife asks him to watch the babies so they don't pull the folded laundry off the couch for a minute while she hurries and puts it all away. Husband doesn't take her warning seriously. Babies make a mad dash for folded laundry and double-handedly pull off articles of clothing one by one in rapid succession, undoing in 10 seconds what took 20 minutes to do.

Husband leaves for movie. Children mad whenever anyone leaves the house and they aren't involved. Wife doing dishes as husband leaves. Wife finishes dishes. Can't find children. Finds children all running amuck in the hallways apparently after oldest child unlocks the door and lets them all out when they wanted to follow daddy.

Wife calls husband and barks at him for leaving her alone with crazy children and tells him he better come back with a safety lock to install on the door OR ELSE.

Husband gone, wife gives babies Tylenol and bottles of milk to put them to bed!

Spend 45 minutes deleting 75 jppjpjijfhphgoihehis.qiqiq.a.aaithjg contacts from cell phone.

Wondering if that could be the reason cell phone kept saying memory full and finally flipped out and completely erased everything. Or if it was the enterers of the 75 jppjpjijfhphgoihehis.qiqiq.a.aaithjg contacts that erased everything.

Spend another 45 minutes trying to navigate and fix results of erased phone with main menu no longer available.

Finally go in to see why the 3 year-old is still yelling his face off long after having been put to bed. Screaming bloody murder stops immediately as door opens and calm voice says, "I don't want to wear dinosaur jammies. I want a different shirt."

Man. 10:30pm and still never got a chance to exercise today. And a lot of fudge stripe cookies were consumed. Husband is out late, might as well get it done.

Exhausted. 1am. TIME FOR BED.
(For as long as it lasts, anyway, which turns out to be 3:30 am.)

Probably shouldn't have exercised. Knee hurts and is keeping me awake. Doesn't matter much because of 3:30 crying anyway. Give bottle. Crying persists for 30 minutes. Finally realize the culprit - who poops at 3:30 in the morning?

Ugh. Morning again. That was way too short.

18 comments:

Tennille said...

You are very brave to post this. I'm not sure I want to see one of my days written out. I think it would just be depressing.

But hey, you found the iPod. Hurray!

Lima Bean said...

yeah, the losing and finding of things is the most frustrating thing ever. they always only want the thing that is lost. back when james was obsessed with lightning mcqueen he would constantly be losing that car all over the house. it was a constant search for that stupid red car and we had THREE of them. you would think that one of them would be in the rotation to play with at all times, but no, often they were all three lost at the same time. i even had a rule that those cars were never allowed to leave the house--the only ones that could actually leave the house were the happy meal toys and other completely disposable toys that didn't matter if they got lost. so i always knew that those darn lightning mcqueens were somewhere in our freaking house and yet i couldn't find them.

parenting is just exhausting. and fun? only sometimes. i'm always trying to look for the fun and don't always find it.

Anonymous said...

At first I was laughing, but by the end, it wasn't funny anymore. Too close to home.

Glad you found the ipod. We just lost ours and it's nowhere to be found. Now that's uncanny.

Anonymous said...

WOW! WHAT A DAY! Just read it to the boys! We are exhausted at 10:25 A.M. just reading all of that. Holy cow! Can say it brought back a few memories, but luckily nothing quite like that!!!!! You are amazing! Hang in there!

Julie

Anonymous said...

And are we having fun yet!

Just read the hilarious post after 3 hours in the yard. I think I will settle for my yard work -- and this morning it was all in the shade!

xoxocyh

P.S. Now, one day Ryan needs to post his total day, including coming home from 8-10 hours of his work to bathing three children and putting them to bed.

Gavin and Shawna said...

funny you should post such a chaotic day....I was just starting to get leary of having another round of diapers,bottles, chaos....thankfully, H.Father did not see humor in making sure my embryos took...just one, bless him!!

katya said...

wow.

Um...

At least you found your ipod? :)

oh, and the fire truck! hmm...

and... you know, the fact that you DID exercise, is fantastic!

I hope tomorrow is better.

Ty and Trista Swartzlander said...

Dang! What a day. I bet that is pretty much how it is every day...right? :) Your day is proof that being a stay at home mom really is a selfless task. Keep it up. One day your children will thank you. P.S. You look hot!

chyayn said...

oh. my. Im sorry I cant send Bailey over to help you. WOW! Hang in there...

Rich said...

cool. . . what movie did Ryan see?

Safire said...

Hehe...I've had days almost exactly like this. So fun! (ish...well...not) It will be fun to read later though.

Jess said...

I'm in tears. TEARS. I cannot believe I didn't wake up my kids laughing at that.
The jammies thing is hilarious!
I'm glad to hear you found the ipod!

Melanie said...

WOW! You are fighting the good fight my friend! Does Ryan know that you are a saint. You let him go to a movie! We do all our movie watching at home.

You are so very funny and from what I can tell handling all this craziness with incredible grace. BRAVO!

Laurie said...

Powder the baby bums with cornstarch and put the diaper on. It will clear up really fast. Cause it does make you crazy trying to wipe up pee. And you are not in the country where you can let a baby run naked. Good Luck Love L

Chadlee said...

Oh my gosh, I laughed myself to tears reading this. This is the best post I've ever read. I know I should be more sympathetic. It was obviously a hard day. You just do a good job of making it sound funny. I can relate to so much of it. Funny how the kids never let you go to the bathroom or take a shower without following you and demanding your attention. AND Steve went to a movie by himself this weekend, too. I didn't want to see Transformers. Steve cracked up reading this too. We're all going through the same craziness, well yours is extra crazy with the twins. Hang in there!

Unknown said...

I was already tired from my CRAZY weekend. Now after reading this I am going to go and take a nap - you are making me exhausted!!!

Catherine Call said...

I laughed my butt of reading this post! I LOVE your hillarious writing! It probalby wasn't very funny to you while you were writing it, though!

What a day!!!.....What a LIFE!!!

Sarah Starr Alleman Smith said...

I just want to let you know, after reading your post, I bought some fudge stripes.