first of all, if anybody knows how to perform a STOP-the-rain dance, please come over here and teach me. i will gladly dance it up every hour on the hour with vigor in order for the little people to be able to go out of this house! off of the end tables! off of the kitchen table! out of my bed with sticky, jello encrusted faces! out of my closet! OUT OF THE HOUSE!! i'm half expecting noah to come floating by any minute and laugh at the two kids in their underwear with bits of playdough stuck in their hair slobbering on the window while mashing their faces up against it waiting on daddy to come home!
yes, the hubs has been working all weekend leaving me here (in the rain) to try and corral the pent up energy of a 4 and 2 year old who haven't been outside in i can't remember when! i don't know what you other people with boys do, but please help me out here. coloring is sooooo not appealing. i have a niece that will sit and color for hours (yes, ari...i'm talking about you. you are more than welcome to visit my house when it's raining.), but mine scribble about 2 lines before shouting "i'm done!" legos work really well, but not if the shorter one keeps destroying the masterpieces of the bigger one. that leads to wrestling. wrestling will keep them occupied for a while (i've given up on trying to stop it...i think it is just programmed in their DNA) until somebody gets headbutted, bitten, a busted lip, or i hear crying followed by "wes poked me in the eye with his toe!" toe-poking is apparently an illegal move. at other various times, i've found wes on top of a bookshelf, climbing the cubbies in my closet, strewing dirty clothes all over the house in order to flip the basket over and pretend he's a puppy dog in a cage (if there was a way to secure the thing, that would be golden) while william stands on the edge of the couch and "practices" his diving or takes every piece out of every puzzle in the house because "it will be more fun this way, mama." if i were a drinking girl, i'd be in trouble.
this wet weekend started on thursday. i took reed and william to the doctor for well check-ups. when you walk out of that place with information for this many shots...it's impossible to have happy children with you!
anyway, wes went along too because we needed to get flu shots. hey, if i'm taking two of them, i might as well take all three. no sense in having to go back to that place! so, i head in to the office with the crew, reach into my pocket to hit the lock button on the remote for the car and off we go. we don't have to wait too long in the waiting room before they called us back, and when they did, i was prepared. i stripped william and reed down to their underwear to await the weight check, and then i plopped william and wes on the exam table and gave them colors to color on the exam table paper. i told you coloring didn't last long around here. it's a little more fun there, but not nearly long enough. thankfully, the nurse came and got william about then for his weight check and hearing test. so he struts along behind her in his itty-bitty boxers and crocs to go do that. i sit wes down with some raisins and wait. reed has gone to sleep.
william comes back with stickers for the masses, and that keeps them occupied for a bit while reed is getting checked out. yeah, he's not asleep anymore. but he does great and doesn't complain a bit. then william finds out somehow that wes ate raisins, and now he wants some. smart mama has some. so he eats raisins. "i'm still hungry." so i pull out the animal crackers for the two of them. dr. I comes in and they discuss which animal tastes the best. i think they decided on the donkey. anyway, wes is getting restless so i pull out the playdough. they makes snakes and blobs and hair for mr. stick. (dr. I draws a man on a tongue depressor and calls it mr. stick. he does this every time, and my boys love it. they will carry mr. stick around for weeks after a doctor appointment. at christmas time, he makes a snowman on a stick. he's a hit too.) anyway, while dr. I and I discuss allergies, eating habits, and the tacos we had at church the night before, the boys are chasing each other in circles (the room is only 2 ft x 2 ft, so you wouldn't think this would be possible) and trying to stab each other with their mr. sticks. then wes "have to go to bafroom" so i take him while william discusses his stock options with dr. I. upon my return, i find that william says his throat feels funny "like i swallowed something i wasn't supposed to....like cotton balls," so dr. I gets the giant Q tip out to check for strep. as we are waiting on that result, wes thinks it would be a great idea to drop mr. stick into the air conditioning vent. when dr. I returns, wes is screaming "come back, mr. stick!!" dr. I graciously gives him another mr. stick while surely thinking that he should prescribe this poor mama some xanax. and william has strep. lovely.
then, the nurse comes in the room with enough needles to innoculate a small army. this is gonna be fun. ok, so 2 of them aren't needles. wes and william got flu-mist sprayed up their nose, and then reed got 4 shots. he didn't like them, and he let us know, but he was a trooper. only cried for a minute.
then she comes for william. he starts screaming like a banshee. they start explaining that MS passed some new law where kids have to get kindergarten shots at age 4 instead of age 5, but i couldn't really hear the specifics over all the screaming. so i put william on my lap and pinned his arms down. the nurse stood over us and pinned his legs between hers and got him 3 times. his crocs had flown across the room and wes is over in the corner screaming "i don't want one!!!!" over and over. all the commotion made reed mad. finally, i got to leave the joint with 3 crying kids.
as we walk to our car, i notice the back window of my car is down. ugh!!! the remote that has the lock button on it also has a button to roll down the back window. i don't know who thought that was a good idea, but they need to be strangled. anyway, of course it's been raining, so the back of my car is all wet along with the stroller. awesome. but there is no time to deal with it now. i get all of the wounded in the car, and we head to pick up william's antibiotic. and the victims all wanted a slush from sonic. fine by me. i needed an extra huge caffeinated beverage after that escapade anyway.
so over the next few days, we play the play with every toy we own and destroy the house game while looking at the radar every 5 minutes and saying silent prayers that the huge green blob would miss us. and so the house remains destroyed.
while we have encountered all this closeness during the monsoon, i have decided that boys are crazy. no, really. there is absolutely nothing that can be considered common knowledge. mama must tell them everything. they think there is nothing wrong with spitting on the kitchen floor until mama tells them that we don't do that. twisting the little knob off of lamps that turns it off and on and hiding it is a fun game. playdough tastes good. little cars make nice weapons. seeing how much toothpaste you can fit in your mouth is a totally normal thing to do. and just yesterday, during "nap-time" (term used loosely) william was found sitting on the floor beside the toilet with a puzzle. when asked what he was doing, "well....i was thinking about popping some popcorn." because, ya know, i like to sit on the bathroom floor in the middle of the night dreaming of orville redenbacher too.
but then....they go to sleep. and they look so sweet and non-crazy when they sleep. it makes me glad that i'm their mama. that i get to tell them not to lick the bottom of their crocs. and not to cry when their balloon gets wrapped up in the ceiling fan (we'll let daddy fix that one). and not to worry about the entire bowl of spaghettios that just got dumped on the floor RIGHT AFTER I MOPPED IT! i'm starting to realize that this house will never be clean like i like it. that it will always be loud. the pictures on the wall will not be straight...if there are any pictures left on the walls at all. but...
if it wanted to quit raining at some point, though, i'd be very, very grateful!!
brown paper packages tied up with string...
