What a Day!

Talk about a day that would have been perfect to not get out of bed. No, I don't mean the weather, I mean just pretend the day didn't happen and ignore everything that did.

I love my kids, I really do, just keep that in mind. I also understand that most of you will probably laugh at me, but at the same time say a little prayer of thanks that you weren't me today.

Things started off bad when the kids woke up earlier than usual. Not by much, but just enough to be a difference. Probably didn't help that I was waking up like my sister (one of those people you avoid as much as possible for the first as least 30 min).

We had finished breakfast and I was pretending I was still in bed. I hear a noise in the kitchen, a mere 15 feet away. Whe I look over I see that Thomas has climbed up and is standing on a chair. He has the top off the Rubbermaid cereal container, and is helping himself using one of Jerry's stacking cups. Before I can do anything, he manages to dump the cereal all over the table and the floor. Later in the day he decided it would be fun to smoosh the cheerios that I hadn't quite gotten all up yet. Read further and you will see why I didn't get them all up.

Thomas, who is almost potty trained, decided to pee on the living room floor (he is horrified any time he does this and stands there crying for me, as if I can help him at this point in the not-so potty process). This was after I had told him to go several times, but Sesame Street was just too exciting.

Next we had the marker incident. Here is me, being so good and doing the dishes. Not sure what made me go into the living room, but I wished I hadn't. Dear, sweet, wonderful, creative, all boy Thomas was having a blast. He had taken Jerry's bottle and was shaking the formula into a stacking cup. Gets better. He then was taking the cup and dumping it on a lovely picture, aka a huge red blob colored with marker. Hmmmm, what happens when liquid meets marker. You got it, red marker all over my living room carpet. Be proud of me, I didn't yell. I did, however, tell him to clean up every single little piece of paper (yes, the paper was so wet it had fallen to pieces all over the floor, plus the pieces that Jerry tried to eat and ripped apart). Silly me didn't realize there was still formula on the paper, so he dripped half way to the kitchen before I caught the fact that he was dripping red even further across my carpet. After a nice long sit in time out he got to watch TV while I cleaned. I was not about to let him help me with that cleanup.

After several hours of cleaning, a few stressed/panicked calls and emails about how to get red marker out of carpet, we went from red to pink. A few more hours, a trip to Target for more clenaing stuff, and we were mostly back to grey carpet. For future reference to those of you who don't think this can happen to you, rubbing alcohol works, Zout works, spray Oxy works, but the real winner is 1 cup warm water mixed with 1 scoop oxy powder. Every now and then while I was cleaning, Thomas would say "I make a red mess," or "Mommy clean up my red mess." At least he knew what had happened. And yes, thank you mom, I do realize that there was no way he could have realized that dumping formula on his picture would cause it to bleed all over my carpet; he was just having fun being a boy.

Oh yeah, and to add to a not so funny situation, Thomas had also given Jerry a formula bath. That's right folks, the baby's hair was slicked down and crunchy. Thank goodness Jerry's formula bath was much easier and quicker to clean up.

Looking back, I should have taken pictures, but I bet your imagination can do a fabulous job creating your own picture.

Moral of the story: If you don't want to get out of bed, don't. If you do, you will wish you hadn't. (Becky, my sister-in-law, told me that when you have a day that you don't want to get out of bed, that is the day you shouldn't take your eyes off your kids. Note that she told me this while she was telling me how to get marker out of my carpet)

And yes, I am now able to laugh at my day and find the humor in the whole mess.

Hope I was able to make you feel better about your day. Or maybe you can look back at when your kids were little and did things like this, and laugh at me while telling me that this too shall pass (and they will have their own kids that do the same thing to them, as my mother so kindly reminded me of one of her similar days involving a gallon of milk from when I was small).