Outnumbered Party of One

Depending on the age of your kids, this post will make you laugh, cry or be very very glad your kids or grown. Or you will think that I am extremely disorganized which means that 1)You are correct 2)You are a better person than I am 3)I'm not having the type of week that I can be happy that you have it all together so I don't want to hear about it. 4)I'm still new at this being outnumbered thing and the only way I'm not losing it is by telling myself that it (and I) will get better in time (like when the last one leaves for college...)


Some mornings make me want to cry...or nap...or never EVER leave the house ever again.

Here is an example of what might happen on any given morning that we have to leave the house early in the morning (before say...10 am).

Probably somewhere around 530 or 600: Teddy wakes up and wants to nurse. He is too tired to do an effective job, so he keeps falling asleep, and waking back up outraged and 'starving.' By the time he is actually done eating, it's 30 minutes before I have to get up and I'm so stressed about getting every possible minute of sleep I can't fall asleep until 5 minutes before the alarm goes off.

Alarm goes off. For a more concrete example, we'll say 700. I get up trying very hard to not wake the baby sleeping on my arm. I get dressed very quickly, use the toilet and sink two floors down so I don't wake the kids before I get a chance to get coffee made. The flush of the toilet wakes Gus. C'MON! I hear his door slam. I race up two flights of stairs to head him off. Too late! He jumps into my bed with the baby. "Hi baby!! Mommy look! Baby is awake!!" He gives him a germ laden kiss and a pat on the head then runs downstairs yelling "EAT-EAT!" Now the baby is screaming, but if I don't follow Gus immediately, half my fridge will be on the kitchen floor by the time I calm the baby and Gus will have picked out breakfast, whether that's strawberries and yogurt, or pickles, or raw eggs (apparently, eggs are "ucky" when eaten raw with shells on...). Why don't we lock the fridge? Well, that would require remembering to do so before bed...and knowing where the lock is at any given time.

I get Gus settled with an appropriate breakfast, dress the baby, nurse the baby, clean Gus up and get him dressed shoes and all which will hopefully stay on. It's probably somewhere around 740 by the time all this is done. My coffee is cold and untouched. I have not eaten. I give Gus a coloring book or other task that were I not trying to go somewhere would keep him occupied for an hour and put the baby in the bouncer. I start packing a diaper bag. I'm interrupted about 6 times by requests for food, Gus messing with the baby, Gus messing with the cats, random tantrums, wanton stuff scattering just to make me crazy, or going to the bathroom to eat toothpaste or "warsh hands" (and face and hair and shirt and floor). I'm trying so hard not to plop him in front of the TV all the time, partially because he becomes a miniature zombie, but also because if we have to leave before he's done with his "show," it will be a screaming, physical wrestling match to get him in the car. I digress...

I lose my sense of humor about the delays and strap both kids into car seats so I can finish packing. It's probably 830 by now and I'm still hungry and caffeine deprived...and LATE!

I do a once through the house. Do a cat head count. Double check that I have spare clothes for both kids and plenty of diapers. Make sure I have Blanket and Paci and 'Warter' (that's water for those of you whose toddlers don't have southern accents). Grab a granola bar and a Pepsi for me. Turn the car on. Remember that I forgot to give the cat his medicine which reminds me that I forgot Teddy's medicine...and oh, yeah there's a load of laundry in the washer that will be mildewed if I don't switch it before I leave but there are clothes in the dryer, where's a laundry basket to put these in!

 Run back in two or three more times to get so-and-so's casserole dish or that shirt they left over here the last time they were here or the paperwork for the doctor's visit.

Leave. Maybe make it out of the neighborhood or even to the toll road before I remember what else I forgot. Decide if it's worth going back for. Look in the rear view mirror. That's right, I was interrupted getting dressed. I forgot to comb my hair. AGAIN.

This last part usually has pieces that get missed. For example Thursday when I went to Michigan for the day (I was gone about 15 hours) I came home to find 5 trains in the toilet upstairs, the water in the downstairs sink running full blast, the cats completely out of food not that it would have mattered because one had been locked in the office and one was in the garage because SOMEONE opened the garage door into the laundry room. Once last week Gus went with no pants while his dried in the dryer because he soaked through his diaper and I didn't bring a spare. On a different day he went without a shirt while I hand washed it because an aunt spoiled him with chocolate...while teething...in a white shirt. (Chocolate is horrible to get out once it's set). Gus had to wear one of Teddy's diapers when I forgot to bring enough of his. If I forget the blanket or paci and we are going to be out of the house for naptime...oh man...

I feel that I am really at a disadvantage here because the same kids that make getting out the door so hard also stole pieces of my brain in utero. I pretty sure at my pre-children intelligence level I could have handled getting in a car and leaving even with two midgets in tow with a lot more efficiency (or more importantly, dignity).

I caught myself daydreaming on the drive to Michigan. In my fantasy world my morning looks like this.

My alarm goes off, I get dressed, grab my coffee and have a bowl of cereal that is NOT soggy from sitting for an hour while I'm constantly interrupted. I grab my keys, my phone and my purse (which has NOT unpacked itself while my back was turned and distributed it's contents to different parts of the house).

Then I LEAVE. Period.

Tuna Rain

Yesterday in a moment of mommy laziness, I dumped a pile of pasta salad on munchkin's plate and added some canned tuna to it in an effort to make it a more substantial dinner. While I put away the rest of the tuna, the child seizes the opportunity to fling tuna everywhere. The cats swarmed the kitchen, racing around, bumping into one another, knowing that any moment this glorious rain could come to an end. I couldn't stop laughing. Sarah couldn't stop laughing. And Gus, who usually gets yelled at for throwing food...was more than a little confused.

Denial

We have three cats. Two of them are rather large, running somewhere in the 15-18 lb range, and the other one is 7 lbs. We have four cat beds located in various places throughout the house. One of the large cats realizes that he is a big kitty and usually chooses one of the two cat beds large enough to hold him. The tiny cat usually opts for one of the big beds as well as she tends to sprawl while sleeping. The other big cat seems to think he is much smaller than he is as he always picks one of the small beds. This generates quite a bit of amusement as he always has rolls of fat hanging over the edge of the cat bed and the whole combination resembles nothing as much as a mushroom.

Kitty Prison

Our cat is confined to the easily cleaned bathroom for what is, I'm sure, a direct result of his own stupidity. He manages to get himself blocked up every couple months or so by eating plastic bags, ribbons, hair ties, the discarded hair from my comb, Kleenex or basically whatever he runs across in the course of daily kitty investigations. Then we have to feed him lots of laxatives and keep him locked up until he passes whatever it is and solidifies again. This means that for a couple days we have been training for when the baby gets here. Night and day and cacophony of yowls and pitiful mewling have been coming from that bathroom as if we had totally forgotten the terms of his imprisonment. I get the sense it is a promise to never be that foolish again if we will only let him out, but as this is the fourth time in the last twelve months... I really hope he wears himself out today so I can sleep tonight...

Tuesday Mornings

My goal on Tuesdays is to get out of bed in time to take the trash down. Why I can't remember to take it down Monday night is beyond me, but this is a typical scenario. I crawl into bed and remember that tomorrow is trash day. At this juncture the question is do I want to wake up early to get it down in the morning or get out of bed right then, put shoes and a coat on, and take it down that night? At the point where I am already horizontal, do it in the morning always wins. I usually nudge Rob at this point and ask if he can do it, but as he goes to bed before me, he talks in his sleep and says yes. Inevitably, that doesn't happen. We go a couple weeks between trash pickups a lot...

So this particular Tuesday morning, I was up at eleven, but didn't remember to check the trash situation until I heard the garbage truck down the street. I let Bob out with me when I went out, but my fierce hunter-killer cat turned into a 20lb. projectile when the garbage truck pulled up. Apparently doors will open magically if you launch yourself into the door repeatedly and howl. Bob, your ancestors would be ashamed of you.

My Children

My cats beg for release from their prison every morning (a spacious house we rent solely for their comfort). They dash outside go ten feet from the front door and eat grass for five minutes, then scratch at the door to be let in (or sooner if an airplane flies over). If I oversleep, they try to expedite the process with claws (as they can only manage sliding doors and doorknobs with lever handles on their own) which motivates me to trim their claws more frequently. I don't get it. Once they are back inside they wind around my ankles as I make breakfast, trying to kill me which makes no sense to me as I am the only one of the four of us that knows how to operate a doorknob. After getting kicked and stepped on, I settle on the couch with my darlings to work on my homework for a little bit before I go to work. Invariably this results in one of four events. 1. Thomas sticks his paw in my water, knocks it over and gets banished from the room. 2. Thomas picks a fight with one of the others or both and all three get banished from the room. 3. Thomas or Bob walks across the computer invariably deleting whatever I am working on or messing up my computer which gets them....banished from the room. 4. One of them decides that I am not paying enough attention to them and uses their claws to notify me of their presence (see consequences above). We do this every morning. I keep waiting for a learning curve to develop, but maybe they are thinking the same thing. I can't wait for real children.