Laundry and Children

Not My Kid

Why is it that our children save their “best behavior” for other people? My kids are pretty good all the time, but there is one aspect of Nicholas’ behavior that is one way for the world and another way for his parents- Potty Training.

Today, Nicholas’ teacher commented on how since he started wearing underwear he hasn’t had a single accident. They have even started to let him nap without a Pull Up (training diaper for those of you in toddler free households). She couldn’t have been talking about the little boy who had the following exchange just 6 hours earlier as I was getting him dressed:

Mommy: Good boy Nicholas! Your nighttime diaper is almost dry. Let’s go try on the Potty.

Nicholas: No Mommy.

Mommy: Don’t you want to use the potty?

Nicholas: No potty now Mommy.

Mommy: Are you sure you don’t have to go potty?

Nicholas: Yes. I no have to go potty now.

Mommy (inner monologue)- Well, he said he doesn’t have to go. I really don’t want to make the potty a bad experience by dragging him there. Of course, I also don’t want to clean up more urine; the chair downstairs was just covered last night. OK. I’ll get him dressed and then take him to the bathroom. Yes, that is a good plan. What is he doing? Why is he spreading his legs out like that? Are his jeans getting darker…OH CRAP….

Mommy (frantic): No Nicholas! Pee-pee in the potty.

Random Thoughts

Hats for babies, who are not able to hold up their own heads, are stupid.

Given the choice your 4 year old will bring the same princess doll in for Show and Tell every week causing her teacher to wonder if the poor child has any other toy.

Children never think your looking.

The child who could not eat another bite of dinner will be starving when the cookies come out.

By December 25th we will all be sick of Christmas, because on October 6th and there are already displays of Christmas decorations in every major store.

As you shop for new clothes for your children, you will find yourself calculating how much you could feed them to maintain their optimum health while slowing their growth, because replacing their entire wardrobe every six months is forcing you to wear nothing but stretch pants and t-shirts.

Calories eaten from "cleaning up" your toddler's plate do not count.

When it is the first time that you are able to leave the house for an adult event without the kids since your infant is born, the baby will spit up, the potty training toddler will suddenly decide he doesn't like the toilet, your husband will be late and it will rain.

Prep This

I love to cook and try to give my family home cooked meals as often as possible. Many times at the top of a recipe there is a Hands On or Prep Time shown as well as a Total Time. Unless you have a prep team and an empty house, these times are a lie and serve only to make dinner late, pushing back bed times and resulting in cranky kids.

By Hands On Time, have they taken in to account your need to be Hands On as your two year old decides that he needs to reorganize your freezer? Or maybe they are referring to the infant that needs Hands On him or he imitates an air raid siren. I swear I could meet that Prep Time except that my Prep Cook’s only experience with ham and pork is pigtails.

 

These lofty time expectations go beyond cooking. I recently made Nicholas’ Halloween costume. The name of the pattern was Two Hour Project. This was a pattern for a child’s clown costume. Therefore, I can only assume the fine people at the Two Hour Project company would know that whoever was making this costume presumably had a small child in their house. With this knowledge, they still called it a two-hour project!? A two-hour project would assume I could finish the costume a) between Jack’s feedings, b) during the children’s nap, and c) without pulling an all nighter because the last thing my daughter thanked God for in her nightly prayers was Nicholas’ new "two-hour" costume which I had already been working on for 7 hours.

Whenever a Prep Time is given, it should read, “Prep Time: 30 minutes Total Time: 1 hour 30 minutes, Prep Time with Children: 30 minutes multiplied by the number of children under 5 in your house, Total Time: Oh Hell, you’ll be lucky to ever eat/wear this.”

The funny things about time and kids is that while many things take much longer (simple sewing, cooking, getting out of the car), other tasks are now accomplished in record time. I can shower, dress and throw on mascara and lipstick in twenty minutes, the average length of a cartoon once I have “wasted” the first ten minutes mediating who is sitting where and how one child is now forbidden from looking at the other child and no you can not hold the baby right now. If you average out my shower time over the course of a week, factoring in missed showers or short showers due to the water being converted to a white hot lava flow by a flushing toilet, I am down to like 12 to 15 minutes.  Which is good, because I need that extra time to Prep for the next thing.

Move Over Neil

I realized something at the grocery store last night: Neil Armstrong probably had an easier time leaving the lunar module to embark in to an airless atmosphere full of unknown dangers than I have leaving my car with three children to get milk.

Here is the routine: tell the older children to unbuckle, get Jack’s car seat out, determine which door Nicholas is willing to exit from, wait for Nicholas to climb to the door of choice and help him to exit, sometimes he is put off by the help an climbs back in the car to do it himself, then Nicholas insists on flipping the handle that moves the seat allowing Rachel out of the back of the car, determine if Rachel has indeed unbuckled her seat belt, help Rachel out of the car because the seat in front of her doesn’t flip all the way due to the base of the baby’s car seat, shut the door, make sure everyone is holding hands, finally leave the car. If you can imagine, getting back in to the car is an even more involved ordeal.

Everyday I achieve one small step for Mom, one giant leap for Momkind.