The title of this post might be overly dramatic but as they say laughter is the best medicine!
- I did not laugh when Nora at 10 months sat in her car seat, holding my keys in her cute little baby hand, hitting the lock button and laughing when the car honked. I was not laughing because I was standing outside her window pleading with her to hit the unlock button.
- I did not laugh at the time both No Eye and Soapy had Hershey squirts in the bath tub.
- It was our second Sunday in a new ward and Nora came out of nursery with a pout on her face. When I asked her what was wrong she told me that she was in trouble for saying, "poop, poop, fart, fart, toot, toot" in nursery. (I almost died of embarrassment not laughter)
- I had to climb my fat, sick, 8 month pregnant self to the top of the McDonald's play place to drag Nora down. I found 3 half eaten, oldy, moldy chicken nuggets on the way up. I got stuck in the tube slide on the way down. I prayed and prayed that they wouldn't have to use the jaws of life to set me free. It took quite a while to wriggle my way down but my prayers were answered. Needless to say I didn't return to McDonald's without reinforcements for a very long time. At the time it WAS NOT FUNNY! and even though it was almost a year ago this one still isn't funny.
- I didn't even giggle when she covered herself and my bed in a bran-new bottle of diaper-rash cream and then asked me if she looked pretty with her make-up on. What I did was snap a picture so that I could laugh about it later.
On Friday one of my favorite people in the world posted this as her Facebook status:
"My day is going good so far... no finger paints on my bed spread, no pee puddles on the floor and no Anna's have escaped the house without my knowing..."
I saw this and thought to myself hmmmm, I think that I too had a pretty good day.
Then I started to go over in my mind the events of the day...
I woke up to Ryan's screams at 6:30 a.m. and realized that he was sitting in a huge disgusting blow out. I got that special treat cleaned up (BTW-it smelled like Twizzlers) I then made him a bottle and was reminded that I needed to buy formula. Luckily it was pay day. It took about 3 more hours to get Nora out of bed get them both dressed, fed, bundled up and in their car-seats and we were off to Sam's Club.
While shopping Nora and Ryan were actually really good. Nora didn't beg to get out of the shopping cart and with the promise of McDonald's for dinner whining was at a minimum. I loaded up the cart with huge boxes of stuff that will last us months and spent way more than I should have, typical Sam's Club outing. After we were done at the check out I looked down and noticed that Nora had on only one purple boot.
"Nora, where is your other purple boot?" I asked.
"I don't know mommy." She replied
"Did you notice that it had fallen off?"
"Yes, it fell off a long time ago while we were shoppin'."
This is where I let out the world's biggest sigh turned the heavy cart around and began to retrace our steps. We looked up and down every isle for the purple boot and I was determined to find it. Alas we were not having very good luck and after what seemed like an eternity had passed I thought, "I'm just going to buy her another pair of damn purple boots and get the heck out of here!" just as this little thought had entered my mind an employee at the deli said he saw a guy carrying around a purple boot that matched Nora's.
We went to the customer service desk and sure enough some unknown hero had turned in Nora's purple boot. I now pray that good fortune and blessings will befall the man who turned in our purple boot.
The store trip had only taken an hour longer then I had planned.
After we got home I prodded, threatened, begged and sang the clean up song about 20 times for Nora to clean up her blocks and she did! Nora actually picked up her blocks in the family room! I was a proud mother of a 3 yo child who had picked up her own toys for about 20 minutes because while I was making our PB & J lunch she promptly decided that she wanted to get the blocks back out, along with every other toy in the toy box and I was to exhausted to make her pick them up.
After a nutritious delicious PB & J sandwich came my favorite part of the day....NAP TIME!!!! Can I get a Whoot Whoot!
Oh how I absolutely love nap time. Nap time brings balance into my universe. I fully intend to enforce nap time until my kids begin Kindergarten or maybe even first grade. And when they aren't sleepy they still have to stay in their beds for at least an hour looking at books or drawing big colorful murals on their bedroom walls in my beautiful new house. Murals, murals, murals that cannot be erased with the Magic Eraser, Soft Scrub, 409 or anything else because the paint in my house can be better described as chalk than paint and easily comes of with even a flimsy paper towel and a squirt of water!!!
After we got up from nap time, Nora, Ryan and I sat on the floor and played for a while. Nora even jumped up and ran to the bathroom when she had to drop a poopy. I was thrilled that I only had to ask her once to get up and go.
After an extra long time in the potty, I heard Nora call from the top of the stairs, " Hey Moooooom! The toilet water is comin'!"
"What do you mean the toilet water is coming?" I asked.
"Oh it's floodin' again." she answered very matter-of-fact.
This lead me to think that it was just clogged which has happened a few times since Nora decided that she needs an entire roll of TP to wipe with instead of the 3 squares which we have repeatedly discussed. Therefore I simply moseyed on up stairs and then I saw my bathroom with 3 inches of water on the floor! and yelled out
"JOOOOOOOOEYYYYYYYY! THE TOILET WATER IS COMIN'!! IT'S FLOODIN'! AND BRING THE PLUNGER!"
Thank heavens I had shoes on. The toilet handle was stuck in the down position! I unclogged the toilet soaked up the water with like 6 heavy duty towels and we went to McDonald's....
McDonald's was a breath of fresh air. Nora made friends, they played tag. When she was "it" she chased the other kids yelling out, "Hey Mom! Come help! We've got some action to do! We've got some ACTION to do mom!" Which totally made me laugh.
I can't decide which part of this visit to McDonald's was better the fact that I finally got to have an actual conversation with my husband, Joe, who I hadn't seen for the past 2 days because he is so busy working 12 hour graveyard shifts and going to school during the day. Or the fact that the cleanup consists of no more then dumping your garbage into the trash receptacle.
Joe kissed me good-bye and was off to work. I bundled up the kiddos and all three of us reluctantly went home.
When we arrived home the fully clothed Nora dumped Dora the Explorer strawberry shampoo on her head. I guess she wanted to get a jump start on bath time.
I bathed the kids, then Ryan had a bottle and because it was only 6:30 p.m. I read Nora 3 stories instead of 1.
They were both in bed an hour early and after all of this I still went to bed with a smile on my face thinking that I have the most beautiful, fabulous, fantastic kids in the universe. And even though I fantasize constantly about leaving the kids with their grandparents for a week and jetting off to some tropical destination with my husband. I know that I am blessed to be able to raise my little ones, that I get to experience their unique personalities everyday and that I get to have such a big part in shaping their lives.
I love being a mom!
