Overwhelmed!

Wow - keeping up with three year olds while working full time makes it hard to keep on top of this blogging business!  I keep having ideas about things I'd like to include, but I just can't get the energy up to open the computer up and start typing.

But tonight I am sitting at a school board meeting listening to a discussion of math course sequencing and I've decided to multi-task and try to remember back to what has happened in the last month.  Here are just a few anecdotes:

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The Bedtime Routine

When the kids head to bed, they have an elaborate ritual, described before, of being lifted up to turn the light off.  For a while, this also involved all of them making little fists to rap on the door frame or wall, calling out, "Knock! Knock!" And so I did something that I'm sure I will regret in the future.  ... I taught them the banana joke.  They would go "knock knock" and I would prompt them with "banana"..."banana who?", etc.

Months later, now, when we go through the process, Daniel and Caroline have lost interest in knocking on the wall, but Max continues.  He knock-knocks, then looks at me slyly around his pacifier and says "bananahoooo?" then instantly repeats, "knock! knock!" and when I smile, he asks, "Ornage who?" (that's not a typo - he currently pronounces it or-naj).  I don't know if I've adequately described it, or if that's even possible without hearing his little voice or seeing his face and the little conspiratorial smile he gives me, but trust me on this one - it is completely adorable.

Daniel and Caroline, for their part, have replaced knock knock jokes with physical exertion.  Caroline insists on climbing into her crib by herself - scaling the night stand in the corner and shimmying up over to the side rail and lowering herself down into the bed.  And then she climbs up and out when it's her turn.  Daniel has started to follow suit, climbing in, but not out.  They are so proud of themselves, I can't imagine transitioning them to toddler beds and denying them that joy.

After all the lights are done, it's time for hugs and kisses.  Max is a hug and kiss machine - or as Uncle put it, "Max-chine".  He wants hugs, kisses on his head, kisses on his back, kisses on his lips.  And then when he's done, he's done and drops down onto the mattress (where he disgustingly sleeps face down in a puddle of his own slobber all night long...but we don't need to mention that, do we?)  Caroline and Daniel want hugs and kisses, too, and they also want their stuffed animals to turn the lights on and off, but they're more content with a single hug or kiss at a time than Max, who needs to be smothered.

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Bath Time Crisis

The other night, we had a bit of a bath time fiasco.  For reasons that will become obvious later on, I will refrain from using any names.  As we approached bath time, one of the kids was very concerned with trying to poop.  S/he spent about an hour admonishing others in the house to "stay away, I'm pooping!" and running off to squat in the corner.  But when bath time came and the diaper was peeled off, there was no poop there, nor was there in the diapers of the other two.

We followed our normal routine of stripping them down and plopping them in the water, but child number three just wouldn't go in.  There was screaming.  There was fear!  And the chant was, "No, Mommy, No Mommy!  There's poop! There's poop in my buns!"  S/he insisted I clean buns - there was no poop there, but you could just tell it was coming.

So I rushed him through the cleansing part of the bath, soaping up the hair and rubbing bubbles up and down him/her, then dousing with water.  While I was quickly drying child number 3 off and putting a diaper on, child number 2 started whining, "oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no"  I struggled to calm him/her while diapering the other, saying, "Don't worry, you're next, as soon as I'm done, as soon as I'm done." And then the chant changed to, "poop poop poop poop poop".  And then I was done, and I sent child number 3 out to the living room.

As I turned back around to face the two remaining bathers, all of a sudden something came flying through the air and smacked me right in my middle.

It took a split second for me to identify the projectile.

It was poop.

I quickly scooped it up off the floor and chastised child number two, "(NAME!) don't throw poop!", but before I was even done with the sentence, s/he was already apologizing, saying, "Mommy, I so sowwy, I SOOO sowwy, I so sowwy, Mommy!" and it took the air out of my angry balloon.

I smiled and took the two kids out of the bath, scooped the two (huge!) remaining poops out of the tub, drained the water, took the few toys out to be sanitized, washed everything down, and then gave the still-dirty kids quick showers - which one embraced and the other cringed at.

But, boy, was that a rough fifteen minutes!