Bright moments

Today was a very, very long day. Well, afternoon. It was a long afternoon. This was not a shock, because Nora was up last night from 1am to 5am, and Jack has some intestinal issues requiring a diet of bananas, rice, applesauce and toast. And we are STICKING to this diet, my friends, because we are most definitely not going to have a repeat of the 10-day-long ordeal of last February. (Ten horrible days, complete with sample collecting by yours truly and a bathroom rug casualty.) But it’s a tough one, because he’s hungry, and there are only so many ways you can present bananas, Rice Krispies, applesauce and toast. (I’ll tell you what, though, Andrew suggested a “banana hot dog” by which he meant a banana wrapped in bread, but which Jack took to mean a banana dipped in ketchup and that is what he ate and he LIKED IT.) So it’s not as though I woke up this morning and thought, “Today is going to be a great day!”

The mental readjustment got me through the morning relatively unscathed. I was lenient with the TV time, and I have actually stopped expecting a morning nap to last longer than thirty minutes, assuming it takes place at all. The lowering of expectations counts for a lot in the mental health of a stay-at-home parent, believe me. But I hit a wall around 2:30, which is when I ran out of both patience and ideas for entertainment. Not-coincidentally, this is also when Nora woke up from her afternoon nap and is when I discovered that my brilliant idea of allowing Jack to float things in a pan of water on the kitchen floor was not so smart, but only because I used the aluminum cake pan that Nora’s birthday cake came in. Friendly tip: Don’t fill a flimsy aluminum half-sheet cake pan with water and then try to pick it up. Trust me. In related news, those pans hold a lot of water.

The afternoon just turned into one of those days where things just kept going wrong. Water all over the floor. Several times. Juice all over the floor. Various other sticky things all over the floor. Laundry piling up. Whining, clinging, biting pre-toddlers demanding attention when all I need is five minutes to take a shower without someone pulling back the shower curtain and causing water to run all over the floor. Poor Andrew got one of my infamous afternoon phone calls where I cry and tell him how miserable I am, and then, just when I’ve got him feeling good and guilty, the baby starts shrieking and I say, “I have to go,” in a dead monotone and hang up on him.

But there were bright spots. And those are the spots I’ll probably remember in a few years. Spots like the impromptu tea party we all had in the living room with Nora’s new tea set, several dollies, Jack, and me. Spots like playing soccer with Jack in the back yard. And spots like the jelly sandwich I gave Nora for lunch.


Nora, you have a little something on your face

Speaking of Nora, would you like to know why I have to make sure she always wears a onesie?