Category: struggles

A New One For Me

After four kids I thought I had seen everything disgusting that was possible involving poop.? There are the incidents I’ve posted about before involving the swimming pool, at the McDonald’s play place, in the washing machine, and at the zoo.? And now I can add another – the bathtub.

We did the usual triple bath last night – all three boys in the tub at the same time.? It can get crazy and cause a mess, but it’s the quickest way to get baths over with.? Thing 3 likes to has to stay in the tub until all the water is out.? Even then it’s a fight to get him to come out.? This kid loves water.

He was sitting in the tub, with no water, when I was helping Thing 2 brush his hair.? When I looked back at the tub, whoomp! there it was.?? I had my iPhone handy to snap a photo for this post but I thought I’d spare you all and leave something to the imagination.? Since he isn’t potty trained I tried to turn it into a teachable moment.? “Poop goes in the potty. “? He wasn’t very impressed.? I fear we’re in for more of these adventures as he goes through potty training.?? Does anyone know a potty training “expert” I can call?

A New Level Of Multitasking

There is no better training for multitasking than parenting. You are constantly juggling several things at the same time. Like talking on the phone while making dinner while helping the kid go potty while giving another kid a timeout. All while trying to change a diaper.

Since the arrival of Thing 4 I have had to up my multitasking game. Here I am one morning this week. I’m feeding Thing 4, with a bluetooth headseat in my ear so I can be on a conference call for work, while refereeing a game of dodgeball between Thing 1 and Thing 2.? What you can’t see in the picture is Thing 3 who is probably climbing on something he shouldn’t be.

multitasking

Don’t Assume Anything

When it comes to Thing 3 it’s best not to assume anything. Don’t assume all is well in the next room just because it is quiet. Don’t assume he won’t run away from you at the mall.

And, apparently, I shouldn’t assume the shoes I put on him in the morning are the same ones he’ll be wearing when I pick him up at preschool.

Notice anything wrong with these shoes? I didn’t. Until we got home.

You might see that one is newer and cleaner. You might also notice, upon closer inspection, that one is 1 1/2 sizes bigger than the other. And, if you are really sharp (I’m not) you’ll see they are BOTH right footed.

That’s exactly what I learned only after we got home. I’m just glad to know the other parent did the same thing.

Most Disgusting Back Seat Ever

I installed a new car seat today, trying to figure out how to fit 2 boosters + 1 toddler seat + 1 infant seat into a Honda Pilot. The trick is arranging them to minimize opportunities for hitting, touching, and throwing things at each other.

Since the seats were all out I thought it would be a good idea to vacuum the car before installing the new one. Here’s a picture to give an idea what the back seat was like. I’m not sure the photo does it justice. It was disgusting.

Parent Abuse

I am regularly abused by Thing 3. He likes to randomly jump on me, bop me on the head, and generally use me as his personal jungle gym. Lately, he has become very bossy with his newly emerging ability to talk.

“Daddy, sit”, “Daddy read book”, and my personal favorite “On Daddy head” which means put this on your head.

I suppose I bring this on myself because I put things on my head to entertain him.

This hard to see, grainy image is not a captured terrorist. It is me being held captive by a 2 year old so he can jump on, climb on, and torture me by hitting my head with books, toys, and various stuffed animals. And I love every minute of it.

So Much For Sleeping

We are in the middle of probably the biggest snowstorm I’ve ever seen. Snow was coming down last night at a rate of 3-4 inches per hour. We let the kids stay up late last night because we aren’t going anywhere for a long time, and hoped maybe they would sleep late.

Shortly after 6am this morning, Thing 1 woke up and ventured downstairs. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem because he is 6 and knows how to turn the TV on and usually waits for everyone else to wake up.

Except this morning he was excited about the snow and wanted to see how it looked outside.

So he opened the front door to look out the glass storm door. Which set off the alarm and abruptly woke everyone up. If you think waking to an alarm clock is unpleasant, imagine a high decibel, high pitched noise designed to scare burglars away.

There Is No Such Thing As A Sick Day

In the movie A League Of Their Own, Tom Hanks memorably exclaims “There’s no crying in baseball”.

Well, in the world of parenting, unfortunately, there are no sick days.

I’m entering day 3 of the worst cough, sore throat, headache, congestion you can imagine. Yesterday I was able to take a sick day at work.

But there was no sick day from parenting. I still had to get the Things dressed, fed, and take them to school. In the afternoon, I still had to do 3 separate art projects in 3 different classrooms as part of Parents Appreciation Week because I committed to it before I got sick. I still had to do a triple bath night, and a Lego project with Thing 3 I had promised him for Friday night because I wasn’t able to be at his Parents Appreciation event because the school scheduled all three at the same time.

Parents Appreciation Week? That’s when the preschool schedules a week’s worth of activities for you with your kids when they’d otherwise be far away at school.

Now today is Saturday and it’s more of the same. But it’s the weekend, you say? Time to get some rest?

In my world, there is another reality which is, There Is No Resting On Weekends.

What Do You See?

What do you see in this picture?

You probably see a normal, well organized shelf full of toys. In fact, it’s from Thing 1’s Kindergarten class. But that’s not how Thing 3, a troublemaking two year old, sees it.

I stopped by the Kindergarten classroom, which was empty, to get Thing 1’s jacket. Thing 3 was with me. I got the jacket while he explored the rest of the room. There is a lot of interesting stuff in a Kindergarten room, especially to a two year old.

We were only there a few seconds. That’s all it takes. Thing 3 saw the same normal shelf and thought it would be fun to dump everything on the floor. So that’s what he did.

Do you see the largest bucket with about a thousand teeny tiny Legos? He dumped that one on the floor first.

In the movie Unforgiven there is a line “When confronted by superior numbers, an experienced gunfighter will always fire on the best shot first.” They have a sixth sense about them.

Thing 3 went for the bucket which would do the biggest amount of damage first. I now know exactly how this incident happened.